Cultural Due Diligence as a Proactive Strategy of Organisational Change: An Empirical Analysys

Abstract

This paper is focused on cultural due diligence as a tool to handle the changes related to a merger and acquisition process. The main goal is to provide a framework to handle the whole merger process in a proactive perspective to managing changing. For a due diligence to be strategic in the decision-making process, it must be related to the ability of evaluating its actual success: the identification of potential problems of culture clash and the anticipated management of the post-merger integration process define a proactive logic of change management, rather than a reactive strategy or an adjustment strategy. Cultural change should occur in all the companies involved and begin as soon as the deal is considered, rather than when due diligence is completed: cultural due diligence helps anticipate the demands of integration. When preliminarily considering cultural characteristics, the acquirer's executives can be prepared to articulate a cultural "end state" for the combined organization; decisions can be made to retain a degree of cultural autonomy in the target or to approach the work of fully assimilating the acquired culture. For the purposes, I examine the use of a professional advisor - NM Rothschild & Sons - in particular. The study is carried out by means of the behaviour analysis of the "due diligence teams" made up of the advisor in the framework of four cross-border merger operations, carried out in the banking sector in particular.

Keywords: Organizational Change, Due Diligence, Culture Clash, Mergers and Acquisitions