Change Management Challenges: A Case Study of CCIC and B&J Merger

This case study analyzes the change management process following CCIC's acquisition of B&J, highlighting the challenges and opportunities in integrating two companies with distinct corporate cultures and management styles. It explores the cultural web of both organizations, focusing on stories, power structures, control systems, symbols, rituals, and routines to identify key differences. The analysis delves into communication barriers, leadership styles, and the role of change agents, assessing factors such as time, scope, preservation, diversity, capability, capacity, and readiness for change. The study emphasizes the importance of understanding employee expectations, fostering inclusivity, and adapting management approaches to facilitate a successful integration and achieve the strategic goals of the acquisition. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering a range of study tools and resources for students.

Change management
Introduction
At present, the company I work for is a multinational inspection and certification institution,
which mainly serves the consulting of China's import and export trade, inspection and testing of
ports, food and milk powder, and so on. The company was established in 1980 and has more than
40 years (Atkin and Brooks, 2021). There are more than 40 companies in China, having more than
300 branches and offices worldwide, the total number of employees is 25,000. In the EU region,
we have six units of companies, and the central business is government authorized business, such
as inspecting the second-hand machine and recycling raw materials. Compared with the other
international inspection companies and the competitors in the same industry, such as SGS, BV,
Intertek, our market share of port inspection in the European market is minimal. Many factors
restrict and affect the company's growth, such as lack of core competitiveness, single corporate
culture, bureaucracy management, etc. At the start of 2018, our main business started to decrease,
and the company realized the impact of a decline in revenue. Therefore, the company's
management wanted to transform the company by developing diversified businesses. One of the
transformations was to make up for our shortcomings by acquiring local companies to improve
our competitiveness and add more fresh blood. Since CCIC is a traditional Chinese company,
manage a foreign company with all local employees. It will be a big challenge for CCIC to
integrate the new company's employees into the corporate culture of CCIC. Although, there are no
significant complaints from the acquired company's employees to CCIC. This paper will analyze
the corporate culture, management style, employees' expectations of the company's future,
leadership, and change agent of both companies to give reasonable suggestions.
Analysis
Culture
As I mentioned before, the acquired company (B&J) and CCIC have different corporate cultures
and management styles. The cultural web will analyze the two companies' cultures before the
acquisition. The cultural web approach is excellent management and organizational tool for
assessing your company culture's strategic direction (Hoyas, J. 2022, February 9).
CCIC B&J
Stories  Good brand reputation
 Good service network in the world
 Good quality for service
 Good inspection network in EU

 Always passion with your work
Symbols  Office size: own building with
company's logo
 Dress code: Business and casual
 More formal interaction
 Company logo design is blue and
whtie
 Dress code: Casual
 Office size: Rent a small office
 Employee always out of the office
Power
Structures
 Hierarchy and Bureaucratic  No Hierarchy and Bureaucratic
 More Democracy
Organizational
Structures
 A complex mix of department
 The GM is most powerful in the
local company, but we also have a
supervision department in China
 Only one department
 Partnership for two people
Control
Systems
 A lot of policies and procedures
 Financial control and monitoring
by head office
 Own OA system
 Audit by the head office every
year and different associations
(such as FOSFA, Gafta)
 Simple procedures and policies
 Email contact with a client
 Audit by different
association（FOSFA,Gafta（
 No internal system. Everything
contraction is by email and Tel
Rituals &
Routines
 Each employee who has worked
for the company for five years will
get a gift.
 Monthly meeting
 Company provide lunch to an
employee, and every year have
team building end of year
 A lot of lengthy meeting
 No one working after 17:00
 Celebrate the birthday people per
month
 Working 24/7
 No lengthy meeting
 No big party end of year
 Friday lunch for free
In summary, we can see that there are differences between the two companies in many aspects,
such as in Power Structures, Organizational Structures, Control Systems, which are more
pronounced, mainly because CCIC is a multinational enterprise (Smimou, 2020). At the same
time, B&J is a business that serves the local area. The growth background of both companies is
also different. In addition, from the diagram, some of the things that cannot be presented are the
reporting and communication between lower and higher levels. CCIC lower-level staff can only
give feedback and report to the central leadership, and then the middle leadership conveys to the
top. While B&J, because of its simple organizational structure, the inspector can report directly to
its general manager.
Both CCIC and B&J have their strengths and weaknesses, and it would be beneficial to each if
they could be perfectly integrated (Hai, Hai, and Tien, 2018).
Communication
Although the company has a clear vision of the strategy and operation, the final implementation is
not as efficient as expected. However, B&J is now a part of CCIC and accepts CCIC's unified
management system and ideology. Though, because of the different environments that both

employees grew up in, there are some problems in the communication efficiency between the two
sides (McCreadie, 2017). For example, first of all, we need to translate CCIC's management
system documents into the local language, and at the same time, arrange for B&J's staff to learn
and train, which will take nearly half a year or more to get the initial effect.
Leadership
Before the acquisition of B&J, there were many disputes between the company's management.
The purchase was halted for a while because CCIC's headquarters had too strict rules about the
acquired company's future earnings (Trong Tuan, 2017). However, due to Mr. Fan's efforts to
lobby the group's senior management and insist on his personal judgment's correctness, the
acquisition was finally successful. A good leader needs to have vision, inspiration, and
momentum; Mr. Fan has a clear vision and insight into the company's future direction and
influences his colleagues through his ability and charisma to create more value for the company.
As he has worked in the front line of the inspection industry for many years, he will provide
professional training to new employees as his time allows.
But for the newly acquired B&J, this management style will not be very effective. First of all,
since Mr. Fan does not speak English or the local language, communication will be the first
obstacle since all of B&J's employees are local. His ideas could only be conveyed to B&J
management through translation, but his leadership could not influence the rest of the B&J staff.
The new company employees were also unable to communicate their ideas to the administration,
which would have created a disconnect between the employees and the leadership in the long run.
Although B&J employees do their jobs every day, the company leaders do not know what they
think about the company. Therefore, the new management needed to find ways and means to listen
to the employees and think about integrating the two completely different corporate cultures to
achieve a good result (Ilyas, Abid, and Ashfaq, 2020).
CCIC's current leadership is all from China, and the average age is over 55. It is not a good cycle
for the company's future development and needs to cultivate young people with a thorough
understanding of Eastern and Western cultures (Ellis, 2021).
Change Agent
Although CCIC has acquired B&J, it is still in the early stages of reform and transformation, and
there are still many variables that affect the efficiency of future changes. Because the change agent
is leadership-driven, power, capability, time, preservation, and scope will proceed smoothly
(Kundinger, 2020). However, readiness for change diversity will likely affect the efficiency of
change. I will then elaborate on each of these:
Time
Time is not a significant threat to the change in the change agent. The CCIC Group's headquarters
conducts an annual review of newly acquired companies. If, within two years, the company does

not meet the group assessment criteria. The company will be re-evaluated and analyzed to
determine why it does not meet the assessment criteria. Therefore, theoretically, it is possible to
complete the achieve change within the time limit set by the group.
Scope
As the acquisition took place in the Netherlands, the acquirer is CCIC Europe, the change agent.
The investment will keep all employees of B&J in their positions, including their management.
However, CCIC, as the significant controlling shareholder, will place its employees in the
management team to carry out regulatory control and communicate CCIC's management
philosophy and culture. For CCIC, there is no change in terms of organization. But for B&J, there
is a significant change in the organization. From the perspective of breadth and depth, CCIC is
only involved in the management but not in the overall organization adjustment, so breadth is
more considerable than depth.
Preservation
CCIC will retain B&J's staff, testing equipment, and client resources. B&J's employees will
continue to work in their current positions and maintain their current benefits. In addition, B&J
will support its operations because of its existing customer base. In addition, CCIC will share its
client resources with B&J to help expand its business and increase revenue in the future. At the
same time, B&J's employees will share their work experience and help CCIC train new inspectors.
This will exchange resources and help both companies improve their overall competitiveness.
In addition, CCIC itself has a complex hierarchy and bureaucratic management style. These may
affect the change agent's promotion efficiency in the change. However, suppose the prominent
leader of the change agent has a subjective sense of advancement and is very strict in managing
advancement details. In that case, these will not be taken into account.
Diversity
Diversity is one of the hindering variables in the change because B&J has just been merged into
CCIC. There are significant differences in the corporate culture and management model of both
sizes. Therefore, it will take a long time in the running-in period. However, there are many
unpredictable risks during the running-in period, such as conflicts between employees,
competition management and performance evaluation between middle managers, and lack of
understanding of CCIC's strategic direction.
CCIC decided to listen more to B&J's employees' expectations after the merger and based on the
employees' research requests to overcome these difficulties. So their loyalty to the company will
be enhanced. It will be regarded as one of the future transformation goals to demonstrate CCIC's
inclusiveness.
Capability and Capacity
Capacity and capability assess the company's planned change. Power is linked to cash, time,
people, organizational structure, and management abilities.
There are three main factors regarding capacity, namely time, people, and cash, all three of which
can be accomplished for CCIC. Because the change agent is top-down, the company will arrange a
person to follow up the management and operation of the company after the merger. If problems
arise, there will be someone to coordinate the friction between the two sides. It takes time to verify
the change results, and the change agent will not set particularly stringent assessment evaluation
indicators for the post-merger performance evaluation. Therefore, the time is relatively generous.
The acquisition is an all-cash deal, and B&J's management is offered shares as an incentive to stay
on.
Regarding capability, this is CCIC's first overseas acquisition. So, in the process of M&A, we are
guided by an external professional consulting firm. However, CCIC will take the lead in the
subsequent management.
Readiness
In the process of change, readiness is another obstacle. Because not everyone is willing to accept
change, not everyone needs and wants to change from the employee's point of view; they are used
to the usual workload and environment. For example, as I mentioned before, CCIC's existing

inspectors cannot keep up with the speed of its business development, and some inspectors are
unable to complete the tasks assigned by the company. Therefore, if change comes, these
employees will be the first to oppose and be slack in work, which will affect the overall working
atmosphere of the company. In addition, although the company's management is a change agent,
there are still many middle managers who have been working at CCIC for many years and have
the average working ability. Still, according to the company's regulations, they can be promoted as
long as they have worked for a certain number of years and completed the assessment index of the
position. Now suddenly there are new staff and employees with good working ability, which will
threaten their future promotion process and affect the speed of change.
Power
The purpose of CCIC acquiring new companies is to fill the company's shortcomings in terms of
business development, thus increasing the company's competitiveness and gaining more market
share in the industry. Replenishing the company with new blood is an essential part of being a
healthy company. CCIC has a division of the head office and regional management; according to
the group rules, acquisitions of less than 2 million euros do not need to be reported to the group
headquarters; the regional companies can decide independently. The addition takes place in the
European region so that the European regional company will be the primary representative of the
change agent for the top-down change process. The European regional company has absolute
management power over B&J. It has complete autonomy, the capacity of execution, and voice
capacity in setting its assessment index, management style, incentive policy, and helping new and
old employees integrate into the company culture.
Conclusion
To sum up, by comparing the two companies' culture, working methods, and management mode, it
is evident that there are significant differences. These differences are mainly because the
employees and management of the two companies have different backgrounds in terms of growing
up and life, company size, mindset, and strategic direction, which are highly correlated with. It is a
big test for B&J employees to accept the association of a completely new company. In the change
process, some employees may not be able to stand the test and leave, while others will accept and
understand CCIC's management model and corporate culture and choose to stay, which will be
verified through more time in the future. Regarding communication and leadership, these are
short-term problems, and they can be solved, but it will take a little more time to reach the
expectations of CCIC and B&J. In addition, CCIC hopes to fill the shortcomings of its business by
acquiring B&J to improve its competitiveness and gain a larger market share in the industry.
Through the change Kaleidoscope analysis, we can see that CCIC's commitment to change is top-
down, throwing into considerable human and financial resources and sufficient time to verify the
change results. Although there are some obstacles in the change process, such as readiness and
diversity, they will be further solved under the change agent-led promotion.
Recommendation
Based on the previous analysis, it is evident that the biggest problem is the compatibility between
the two companies after the integration. There are many differences between the two companies
regarding company culture and management style. Secondly, there is the problem of leadership
and communication. Finally, the progress is driven by the change agent. The following will give
the corresponding recommendation one by one:
1. Socialization
Training, developing, and mentoring-Through training, B&J employees, understand the
background of CCIC, the vision and strategic objectives of the group, and learn the history of
CCIC at the bottom. It can be observed whether they can integrate and recognize CCIC's corporate
culture.
Rites - From the previous analysis, we find that B&J employees lack traditions in their work, such
as promotions, employee awards, team building, and employee anniversaries. CCIC and B&J's
HR department can make a combined program for this purpose and create specific incentives for
each employee's birthday, anniversary, etc., in the future. It will make them feel that the company

cares for them and recognizes their existence.
Top management action - CCIC top management needs to take the initiative to spend more time to
understand the local culture and the origin of the employees' customs and habits. Try to
understand the way of thinking and getting along with the employees. At the same time, the
interaction between CCIC and B&J employees should be increased through various team building
to understand and identify with CCIC's corporate culture and help them break the boundary of
different cultures.
2. Five behaviors of a cohesive team
It is difficult to get two teams that are strangers to each other to work together and create
chemistry. Still, it is crucial to get both teams to be honest and build trust in each other through the
appropriate internal and working interactions. There may be conflict in the process, but it is also a
bond that sublimates the relationship between the two sides. Through difficulties together, they
can trust each other more. Having gone through trials and tribulations together, they will continue
to move forward and take responsibility for the company's goals in the future. Let the employees
of both sides have their sense of responsibility for their work and work together fighting for the
company's future in the end.
3. Leadership
To develop and open up a training program for the development of young executives and to recruit
local employees who recognize and understand CCIC's culture and management philosophy.
4. Change agent
For the CCIC-led change agent, there is some resistance. But it can be digested by CCIC
internally; for example, for those employees who are unable to perform their positions, they can
receive a series of training programs, and if they are still unable to meet the company's
requirements after the training program, they can be negotiated to exit interview by paying a
certain fee. Some employees who are not ready to meet the change can be appropriately trained to
understand why the company needs to change.
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