The Global M&A Tango: How to Reconcile Cultural Differences in Mergers, Acquisitions, and Strategic Partnerships

Book excerpt: A leadership blueprint for managing cross-cultural issues in any M&A deal In our rapidly expanding and increasingly volatile global economy, mergers and acquisitions are becoming the strategy of choice for businesses seeking to stimulate growth while managing risk. As more and more M&A deals are struck between global organizations, difficult new issues involving cultural differences have arisen. In The Global M&A Tango, international management experts Fons Trompenaars and Maarten Nijhoff Asser explain how to detect and manage these issues before they become major problems. Drawing on the world-renowned Trompenaars Hampden-Turner Cross-Cultural Database and Culture Compass, the authors illustrate how widely cultures can differ and, by reconciling the dilemmas created by that difference, how they can be integrated quickly, efficiently, and effectively. The Global M&A Tango helps you meet all the challenges of cross-national M&A by: Creating common mission, vision, strategy, and values Developing trust across value boundaries Enabling people with different cultural perspectives to engage in valuable discussions Change-management programs all too often ignore the culture perspectives of the individuals and groups involved--and it's often why organizations fail to realize the benefits that prompted the integration in the first place. With The Global M&A Tango, you have everything you need to integrate two old entities into a powerful new organization poised for dramatic growth in the coming decades.