How Corporate Culture Is Important For The New Company

Increasing productivity and sparking motivation in employees, are challenges that managers, businesses, and organizations have struggled with for centuries. While there are many beliefs about which method(s) yield the best results, and what is considered to be the desired result, a ‘one-size-fits-all’ management technique still does not exist. The current movement in psychology, called Positive Psychology, focuses on what is “right” in an individual, and not on their faults. This basic concept is starting to extend its influences into the workplace, making it seem that Positive Psychology may become the key ingredient corporate culture, and all places of employment alike, have needed to promote success and satisfaction in their lines of work.

To understand the organizational culture of a company, one needs to start by looking at the history. Lakeshore Learning Materials was born from a divorced mother of three named Ethelyn Kaplan, who took a dream and a chance by moving her family to California in 1954 to open a toy store. When she started noticing that teachers were interested in her material, Ethelyn realized that she needed to expand her business into educational materials. 60 years later, Lakeshore Learning Materials has grown into a company with over 2000 employees, 60 retail stores throughout the United States and growing. Lakeshore Learning Materials is currently headed by Ethelyn’s grandsons, Bo and Josh Kaplan. Under the supervision of Bo and Josh, Lakeshore continues to be a leader in the Educational Materials, yet still able to keep the family culture that their grandmother started. Highest quality customer service and hard work are the core values that shape Lakeshore’s Organizational Strategy. These high expectations aren’t hard for employees at Lakeshore because the company is so loved by everyone that works there, that they give nothing less than the best.

The organization culture as a leadership concept has been identified as one of the many components that leaders can use to grow a dynamic organization. Leadership in organizations starts the culture formation process by imposing their assumptions and expectations on their followers. Once culture is established and accepted, they become a strong leadership tool to communicate the leader 's beliefs and values to organizational members, and especially new comers. When leaders promote ethical culture, they become successful in maintaining organizational growth, the good services demanded by the society, the ability to address problems before they become disasters and consequently are competitive against rivals. The leader 's success will depend to a large extent, on his knowledge and understanding of the organizational culture. The leader who understands his organizational culture and takes it seriously is capable of predicting the outcome of his decisions in preventing any anticipated consequences. What then is organizational culture? The concept of organizational culture has been defined from many perspectives in the literature. There is no one single definition for organizational culture. The topic of organizational culture has been studied from many perspectives and disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, organizational behavior, and organizational leadership to name a few. Deal defines organizational culture as values,

The analysis is based on the merger and acquisition between E.T Kearney and EDS. E.T Kearney is the largest management consulting group while EDS is a technology firm. The company’s merged to form a new defining entity that could combine the synergies of both firms in the quest for improved efficiency. The merger created a cultural shock which created problems that are associated with organizational culture change .In this paper, we analyze the merger and acquisition as well as the recommendations for better performance of the newly created entity.

Mergers and acquisitions have become a growing trend for companies to inorganically grow a business within its particular industry. There are many goals that companies may be looking to achieve by doing this, but the main reason is to guarantee long-term and profitable growth for their business. Companies have to keep up with a rapidly increasing global market and increased competition. With the struggle for competitive advantage becoming stronger and stronger, it is almost essential to achieve these mergers. Through research I will attempt to dissect the best practices for achieving merger success.

Due to the diversity of the cultures in the merged organizations, the management team has to facilitate a working culture in the new organization. Each organization

When companies combine/merge the whole objective is to gain new opportunities, gain market share, grow the business, to become more innovative and to improve product offerings, utilizing/sharing the existing resources and data. From the case

Cross-Selling will be strongly encouraged in the company by giving incentives to the sales teams of both companies. In addition, the company should train a middleman

Also, they don’t prioritize the necessary modifications causing confusion and negative reactions of employees. Some leaders don’t realize how it will affect their employees and begin to lose them. According to Jacobsen, merging companies can influence the companies due to different cultures and not adapting to the changes, In summary, Implementing changes take time to make all the following steps and providing the necessary training.

Firstly, the need for achievement is met by understanding that people strive to master difficult situations, endeavors or challenges. This idea works on both an organizational level, as well as an individual level. From an organizational level, it is well known that a merger of this magnitude had never been attempted. With that brings a great challenge to succeed, and lets the leadership work in new and innovative ways to make

Merging cultures after two independent organizations combine requires specific attention. Initially employees will emphasize the differences between organizational cultures and tend to think that their way of doing things is better than the other company (Maden, 2011). The result of misfit between two cultures of merging organization is known as culture clash. The appropriate response to this situation would be to figure out the basic concepts of culture and establish middle grounds that both organizations can agree upon. Middle managers can help relay and explain to staff the newly redefined culture of the organization and its significance. Middle managers help unify an organization because they interpret and transmit the organizational culture (Embertson, 2006). Middle managers serve as a liaison between the senior managers and employees. The use of efficient middle managers is essential in order for the culture of the two organizations to combine. Both the managers and the employees must have a clear understanding of the culture of the organization. The use of middle managers is the best way to ensure that the culture of the organization is understood, by both staff and the managers. Bringing in innovation and successfully implementing changes in an organization is made possible by the use of efficient middle managers (Embertson, 2006). Combining organizations eliminates competition. The two organizations no longer have to worry about competing with

Effective leadership is believed to stem from characteristics of someone that is able to inspire those around them, developing relationships with their subordinates and peers, their purpose is to lead. Within an organization leaders are to engage followers on a common mission and purpose. Corporate culture is a relevant force within organizations and satisfying employee’s needs are becoming more relevant to retention, as well as aligning an organizations shared values. Organizations have a leader and then there is a trickle down of leaders (also followers) to the lowest end of the totem pole. How effective is a corporate culture from the top to the bottom? An organization may create a corporate culture, but how effective is that culture with employee satisfaction and retention?

Corporations in our new technology environment are in constant search to adapt old business practices with new corporate culture needs. We have seen the value brought into every organization when human capital is considered a cornerstone of corporate success along with administrative, technological and infrastructure developments. Human capital is the sum of every attribute that adds economic value to what an individual can produce. This includes a wide range of attributes, such as a person’s creativity, useful knowledge in specific areas, work skills in particular field, social skills, personality, and work ethic (Flair, 2013). The following paper will show just how human capital is valued and used to create a better culture within a company.

The cultural roots of each company are difficult to combine even for domestic companies. For two companies from two different countries to merge, the opportunity to misunderstand and disagree is inevitable. The difference in customs, language, values and training means that any merger between companies will not be equal. Calling a merger of equals when it is not will also worsen the internal power struggles for control of the company.

integrating the different cultures. It will come as no surprise the communication style at each of the organizations need to be clearly identified. The two groups coming together could have very different styles of communicating to not only staff but customers as well. One organization may use electronic communication means as the main way they communicate within the organization. Maybe most of the communication is done via email instead of direct conversation. Where another company may prefer having direct communication face to face or via the telephone. As you can see, this could create a significant challenge for both organizations because as they merge they will become frustrated or could even misinterpret an email whereas the staff that is meeting face to face may feel neglected or ignored because they are not having direct interactions. Identifying the different types of communications and establishing a standard format that meets the needs of the employees without comprising the effectiveness of the message must be one of the first steps when integrating multiple cultures.