MERGE RIGHT: ACQUISITION INTEGRATION STRATEGIES
Mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, major reorganizations, downsizings, installation of new top management teams, and international expansion have become very popular business strategies over the past 25 years. They all promise great economic rewards for the companies that employ them, but history has shown that they generally fail to deliver on their enormous promise. dtbastien.com is the intercultural strategies website for David T. Bastien, Ph.D. David Bastien has been a leading author and researcher of the management of mergers, downsizing, and international expansion since the mid 1980’s.
In the 1980’s and early 1990’s he published leading edge research about leadership, organizational culture, and communication patterns in mergers and acquisitions. The novel methods he developed to conduct the research have evolved into sensitive and accurate tools to measure and analyze the unique management situations that mergers, downsizing, and international expansion present.
In 1994 he published the first scientific studies of the effect of these business strategies on customers and competitors. He found that customers tend not to be supportive of a vendor’s merger, acquisition, or reorganization. He identified three distinct waves of customer disaffection. For each wave, David Bastien has developed sensitive tools to help anticipate and minimize customer loss.
Among the important implications of his findings regarding customer (and revenue) loss in organizational change is that competitive rivals can be the greatest beneficiaries of a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or any other basic organizational change. In his article, Competitive Judo, he described the details of the opportunities available to rivals of the changing company. Dr. Bastien has developed the measurement instruments and training packages to allow competitors of changing companies to attract many new customers.