Whoever merges companies or departments, needs to care about merging the cultures involved.

Intercultural integration in merger or change processes

Process consulting

Merging teams from existing organisational entities into new teams, or merging departments or companies – it is easier to do this on paper and following business logic than to effectively realize it in pratice. You just cannot change peoples frames of reference, customs and values 'at the push of a button'. If there are certain differences between the group, company, or national cultures are involved, then people might run into severe interpersonal conflicts that can hinder or block the change process.

A professional response is to accompany such merger or change endeavours by a professional cultural integreation process. For such process consulting, it is key to identify the nature of relevant cultural differences early on, in a systemtic way – and comprehensible for all people involved (cf. Cultural Due Diligence process). As an outcome of this we can develop targeted communication, training or coaching interventions which help managers and staff involved to recognize the specific conflict potential of their situation. We support them to develop successful strategies to deal with conflict and building a sustainable new culture for their new team.

We use our experience in intercultural relationship management in order to support the post-merger integration on an cultural level.