BUS501: Strategic Management

Growth as a result of acquiring companies in the supply chain, or diversifying into other sectors not only creates the potential for mistakes due to inadequate knowledge of the industry, but by insufficient acculturation of the companies acquired. Every company develops its own culture from the moment it is founded. This is manifested in the founders' value system in regard to their employees, customers, suppliers, sponsors, and other partners. Founders will always try to transfer their value system onto their employees and thus form their behavior completely or at least partly. Company culture is also manifested in desired forms of behavior, rituals, and accepted processes of analyzing and solving processes practiced by the founders which they in turn would like their employees to implement. Communicating these values and forms of behavior is part of the management process.

If other companies are acquired in the course of planned growth processes, the company also takes on their "foreign" firm cultures. The confrontation between two or more incompatible firm cultures makes acculturation essential. The different cultures must be adapted to each other, or the growth of the entire company and its individual departments due to synergy effects is at stake.

There are three different acculturation strategies to choose from. In the case of usurpation, the management from the bought out firm is replaced by the management team of the firm that bought it out. This model is generally expensive, but can be implemented relatively quickly. In the case of adaptation, the buying and bought out firm(s) get to know and understand each other's cultures in order to change and adapt them step by step. This model is much slower than usurpation, but also cheaper. The synthesis model consists of consciously giving up the old firm culture and creating a new one. This model makes sense if the acquisition means that the markets and thus market-oriented strategies change, or the national orientation of the start-up can be expanded to an international one. Doing without acculturation strategies not only stunts growth, but also increases the risk of bankruptcy.