Organizational Identification During a Merger: Determinants of Employees' Expected Identification With the New Organization*
| Author | Rynke Douwes,Menno Jong,Jos Bartels,Ad Pruyn |
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2006.00478.x |
Organizational Identification During a
Merger: Determinants of Employees’
Expected Identification With the New
Organization
*
Jos Bartels, Rynke Douwes, Menno de Jong and Ad Pruyn
University of Twente, Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, Department of Communication Science, P.O. Box 217,
7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
Corresponding author email: j.bartels@utwente.nl
In order to investigate the development of organizational identification during a merger,
a quasi-experimental case study was conducted on a pending merger of police
organizations. The research was conducted among employees who would be directly
involved in the merger and among indirectly involved employees. In contrast to earlier
studies, organizational identification was measured as the expected identification prior
to the merger. Five determinants were used to explain the employees’ expected
identification: (a) identification with the pre-merger organization, (b) sense of
continuity, (c) expected utility of the merger, (d) communication climate before the
merger and (e) communication about the merger. The five determinants appeared to
explain a considerable proportion of the variance of expected organizational
identification. Results suggest that in order to obtain a strong identification with the
soon-to-be-merged organization, managers should pay extra attention to current
departments with weaker social bonds as these are expected to identify the least with the
new organization. The role of the communication variables differed between the two
employee groups: communication about the merger only contributed to the organiza-
tional identification of directly involved employees; and communication climate only
affected the identification of indirectly involved employees.
Introduction
Both in profit and in non-profit organizations,
mergers seem to be the order of the day. Merging
is one of the prominent strategies used by
organizations to increase market shares, reduce
costs or create synergy. At the same time, it is
generally acknowledged that mergers may in-
volve a difficult process with uncertain outcomes.
More than half of the mergers eventually fail to
some extent (Cartwright and Cooper, 1992).
Problems can often be ascribed to human aspects
involved in mergers (Blake and Mouton, 1985;
Haunschild, Moreland and Murrell, 1994). They
may occur because of members’ perceptions of
inter-group differences in the new organization
(Jetten et al., 2002), incompatible organizational
cultures (Cartwright and Cooper, 1993) and
conflicting corporate identities (Melewar and
Harrold, 2000). All these problems seem to refer
to one underlying phenomenon: that in merger
processes members (or employees) of the new
organization (the ‘mergees’) may feel threatened
when their group is endangered by the ‘infusion’
of new identities and that they are inclined to
cling to the group they are already part of. As
a consequence, employees may lose their psycho-
*
The authors would like to thank Diane Ricketts for
her help.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 17, S49–S67 (2006)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2006.00478.x
r2006 British Academy of Management
logical commitment to or identification with an
organization (e.g. Cartwright and Cooper, 1993;
Dutton, Dukerich and Harquail, 1994). In
addition, mergers may lead to a variety of
reactions, such as intention to leave (Mottola
et al., 1997; Van Knippenberg et al. 2002), lower
self-esteem (Terry, Carey and Callan, 2001),
stress (Terry, Callan and Sartori, 1996), lower
productivity and even illness (Cartwright and
Cooper, 1993).
Social identity theory (e.g. Tajfel and Turner,
1986) offers an interesting explanation of why
employees often react so negatively to organiza-
tional changes or mergers (Hogg and Terry,
2000). Mergers may be perceived as a threat to
the stability and continuation of employees’
current identities. People may thus resist merger
processes, especially when these imply a serious
threat to existing group values, structures or other
manifestations of intra-group culture. This will be
even more so when the work (group) serves as an
important cornerstone of the employee’s personal
(self-)identity. Under such conditions, one would
expect a negative relationship to exist between
pre-merger identification with the ‘threatened’
organization and post-merger identification with
the new organization. Moreover, the stronger the
social bonding with the existing organization (the
company, the department or even the work-
group), the more problematic the imminent (re)
identification with the soon-to-be merged organi-
zation. Research has indicated, however, that the
assumption about a negative relationship between
pre-merger and post-merger identification may
not be as clear-cut as it seems. Bachman (1993)
found a positive relationship between pre-merger
and post-merger identification in her study on an
inter-group model for organizational mergers.
In a survey study within merged organizations,
Van Knippenberg, Van Knippenberg, Monden
and de Lima (2002) found positive correlations
between pre-merger and post-merger identifica-
tion. These correlations were particularly strong
for members of the dominant (sub)organizations
in the merger. Pre-merger identification appeared
to be a strong predictor of post-merger identifica-
tion. Van Dick, Wagner and Lemmer (2004) also
found a positive relationship between pre-merger
and post-merger identification. They explain
this finding by referring to the relatively limited
consequences of the merger as perceived from the
post-merger situation: the employees were able to
transfer parts of their old identity into the new
organization.
In a longitudinal study by Jetten, O’Brien and
Trindall (2002), mixed results were found regard-
ing the influence of pre-merger identification.
Evidence was found that high initial organiza-
tional identification had a positive effect on long-
term organizational commitment. It appeared,
however, to be relevant whether employees
identified themselves primarily with the work-
group or with the organization as a whole. As the
merger implied a major threat to existing work-
group structures (‘the composition of the work-
teams changed dramatically for most employees’,
Jetten et al., 2002, p. 293), a strong workgroup
identification in the pre-merger phase led to
negative feelings about the merger. Under such
conditions one would not expect a strong post-
merger identification. A strong super-ordinate
organizational identification (with the ‘corporate’
organization instead of with the workgroup or
department) led to more positive feelings about
the merger, however. Important underlying vari-
ables in these studies appeared to be the salience
and perceived threats of pre-merger subgroup
identities. Thus, a positive relationship between
pre-merger and post-merger identification might
exist when employees do not experience the
(forthcoming) changes as a threat to their current
(pre-merger) situation. This may be the case, for
example, when they are only indirectly involved
in the merger because their workgroup is hardly
affected by it or when employees consider the
corporate identity to be of more importance to
them than the workgroup identity.
Another possible explanation for the reported
positive relationships between pre- and post-
merger identification is that in these studies, as
in the majority of the studies on organizational
identification, pre-merger identification was mea-
sured from the perspective of a post-merger
situation. Employees are asked in retrospect to
what extent they identify with the new organiza-
tion. This may have methodological and manage-
rial drawbacks. One methodological drawback is
that employees’ perceptions of the identification
process (pre-merger identification, but also other
relevant factors such as expected utility of the
merger, sense of continuity and communication
about the merger) may be biased by memory
distortions and history (employees’ experiences in
the new, post-merger situation). Such ‘hindsight
S50 J. Bartels et al.
To continue reading
Request your trial