Employee Satisfaction Challenges After Mergers and Acquisitions

This report delves into the critical issue of employee satisfaction following mergers and acquisitions (M&A). It examines the challenges faced by organizations, including workforce integration, cultural differences, and the impact of HR issues on productivity and profitability. The report analyzes the merger between WMF and Groupe SEB as a case study, highlighting the importance of managing human resources during M&A. It explores various research methodologies, including inductive research design and qualitative data collection through interviews, to understand the key factors influencing employee satisfaction. The literature review covers relevant theories and studies, emphasizing the significance of addressing employee concerns to ensure successful integration and achieve desired outcomes. The report also outlines ethical considerations and limitations of the research, providing a comprehensive overview of the strategies and challenges related to employee satisfaction in the context of M&A, and offers solutions to address these challenges.

Research Title: Strategies to increase employee satisfaction after Merger and Acquisition
Chapter One: Introduction
Introduction
The present research is focused towards understanding the challenges in employee satisfaction in
merger and acquisition. The changes in the operations of department impact the productivity and
performance of the employees. There are several market-driven reforms or changes, which
increases mergers between the business organizations (Schuler and Jackson, 2001). However, if
the employees remain dissatisfied after the merger, it hampers the negativity of the firms. The
background of the research is the merger between Germany Company WMF and Groupe SEB.
The German Group WMF is a popular company in professional coffee machines and cookware.
Groupe SEB is a French consortium, specializes in small business appliances. Groupe SEB will
significantly benefit from these decisions, such as it can enter the attractive market of
professional coffee machines, strengthen its position in cookware and enter new markets.
Although it is huge opportunity for both the organizations, they have to create significant
synergy between different organizations.
Research Problem
 In the present competitive market, acquisition can be an attractive growth strategy for the
business organizations as it reduces overhead cost, attain synergy in organization’s
operations and assist in gathering top talent. These factors result in lack of productivity in
the organization. The employees struggle to adopt the corporate culture of the acquiring
company, which hampers the productivity of the organization. The workforce integration
is a significant challenge for the employees. The integration of the workforce is highly
challenging as bridging two workforces means identifying different approaches for long-
term operations and working style of the organization.
Research aims and objectives
Following are the aims and objectives of the research:
 To analyze the extent to which the employee satisfaction in merger-environment impacts
their productivity
 To analyze the impact of human resource issues in overall profitability of the
organization
 To analyze the impact of cultural difference in the performance of the merger and
acquisition
Significance of the Project

Mergers and acquisition have become extremely popular strategy in achieving corporate growth
and diversification. However, the performance of merger and acquisition is declines, if the
management fails to integrate the culture of different workforce (Rao-Nicholson, Khan and Stokes,
2016). The organization culture of the companies is dependent on the organization culture, HR
system and managerial viewpoints.
Chapter Two: Literature Review
Literature Review
In the perspective of Björkman and Søderberg (2006) in the present, several business organizations
are adopting different strategies to become profitable, flexible, and have a dominant market
position. As a consequence, merger and acquisition have become increasingly popular. They are
the popular market approach to enter a new market. However, most of the business organizations
forget to manage the human resources, which are the most important element of the business
organizations. According to the literature, there ae several determining factors of the merger and
acquisition deals. It includes legal, financial and operational elements of the deal; however, now
the management executives realize that human resources are the key factors, which determines
the success or failure of the deal. There are several reasons, which results in the neglect of the
human resources issues of the organization. Firstly, he top management assumes that the human
resources are soft and difficult to manage, there is lack of awareness regarding the importance of
people issue, and the focus of merger and acquisition activities is on the finance, accounting, and
manufacturing rather than the human resource management.
In the views of Regis (2008) in the merger and acquisition, there are several stages or phases, in
which the human resource issues can occur, such as retention of the talent, communication,
retention of the senior managers and integration of the corporate culture. These are main stages,
and from this, several serious people issues occur, such as evaluation and selection of the
manager talent. While integrating the corporate culture of different companies, it is important to
evaluate the human resource policies and practices of different countries revise and replace them.
According to Antila & Kakkonen (2008) the first stage of merger and acquisition is the pre-
combination stage. In this stage, there are several human resource activities which can impact the
success of merger and acquisition of the companies. A significant issue is the first stage is the
identifying the reasons to initiate the activity. The acquisition and the retention of the key talent
is a major concern during merger activities. Another important issue in merger and acquisition
process is developing a completely dedicated team, which can head all the aspects of the human
resource activities. In the merger and acquisition activities, the leaders have to consider several
different aspects of the management of the integration process. The company should identify the
potential companies, which are the most beneficial in the acquisition process. There should be
discussion regarding the impact of potential mergers with respect to the company. The selection
of the merger and the acquisition company is a critical step, as it will impact the overall success

and failure of the organization. The merger and acquisition manager has several different
responsibilities, namely, negotiating deals with the talented employees of the company, offering
retention bonuses and writing agreements for the employment (Stokes, Liu, Smith, Leidner, Moore,
and Rowland, 2016).
According to Brueller, Carmeli and Markman, (2018) in the cross-cultural merger and acquisition
ventures, there are several issues related to the corporate growth and diversification. Although it
is a convenient and popular strategy, the performance of most of the merger and acquisition
strategy has not been successful. The primary reason of the failure of the merger and acquisition
is challenge in integrating the different cultures and workforces of different firms. The
sociocultural integration between the workforces of different cultures is a significant challenge in
the merger and acquisition of the companies.
Research Questions
The research questions of the present research can be formed as:
 What are the human resource issues in the merger and acquisition of the business
organizations?
 What are the solutions to address the human resource issues in the business
organizations?
Chapter Three: Research Methodology
Research Design
The research design is an integral part of the research methodology. There are two types of
research design, namely, inductive research design and deductive research design. The inductive
research design is used when the researcher tries to explore new information related to the
research area. In this research design, the aim of the researcher is to explore novel information
related to research. On the other hand, in inductive research design, the researcher validates the
confirmed facts or provides evidence for a hypothesis. It does not explore any new information;
however, provides evidence for previous information. The deductive approach is used with
quantitative research methods whereas inductive research approach is used with qualitative
research methods. In the present, inductive research approach is used to analyze the HR issues in
merger and acquisition (Betley & Noble, 2017). An interview will be conducted with the
research participants. The interview will comprise of a combination of close-ended and open-
ended questions.
Target Population
The target population is determined as 10. The research participants will be the HR managers in
multinational organizations. The HR managers will have thorough knowledge of the HR
strategies adopted during the merger and acquisition of the organization.

Sampling Method
The sampling method of random sampling will be used in the research. The random sampling is
a sampling technique, in which each research participant has equal chance of being selected in
the research. It represents the population in an unbiased manner. It is the simplest form of
collecting information from the total population.
Data Collection
In the present, the data collection method of interview will be used in the research. In the
interview, several open ended questions will be asked to identify the views of the researcher. It is
a qualitative research method. The qualitative research focuses on gathering data and using
computational techniques to explain a particular phenomenon (Mackey & Gass, 2015).
Data Analysis
In the present, the data analysis technique of content analysis will be used. The researchers will
use themes to analyze the data collected through primary data collection method.
Reliability and Validity
The research data should be reliable and valid, if it should possess any value. The reliability
refers to the repeatability of the findings and the validity refers to the credibility of the research.
There are two types of validity, namely, internal validity and external validity. The internal
validity analyzes whether the research instruments are measuring the exact variables, they were
supposed to measure (Neuman, 2014). The external validity examines whether the research
results can be generalized beyond the study.
The interview is used as the primary data collection method. In order to assure validity and
reliability of the research, the researcher will create an inclusion and exclusion criteria for
including the research participants in the team. Further, the research will use the latest
information and published sources in the research area. It will assure that the researcher will have
access to the latest information in the research subject.
Ethical Consideration
In research, ethical consideration is essential as they assist the research to distinguish between
right and wrong actions. The ethical consideration is essential in the research as prevents
falsification and fabrication of the data. They create a collaborative environment, which is
developed through trust, accountability, and mutual respect. There are several ethical challenges
in research as it requires issues related to data sharing, co-authorship, copyright and
confidentiality. In research, there are several ethical guidelines such as honesty, objectivity,
respect for intellectual property and social responsibility. The biggest ethical challenge is the
respect for the human participants. The most common example of ethical consideration in the

research involving human subjects is voluntary participants and informed consent. The
participants should analyze that all the human subjects are chosen to participate with a free will
and the research should not harm the human participants at any cost.
Research ethics assures that the research outcomes are accepted by the society as a whole. It
builds trustworthiness of the research. The researcher will abide by ethical considerations, while
completing the research. The research will ensure that the confidential information of the
research participants is protected. The researcher will also assure that the information used from
the work of other authors will be cited and referenced in a proper manner (Marczyk, DeMatteo,
and Festinger, 2017). The researcher will present the research outcomes as it is, without any
manipulation.
Limitations
There are certain limitations of the research. The researcher will face time and financial
constraints while completing the research. The researcher will face limitations in forming
research aims and objectives, implementing data collection method and determining the
appropriate sample size.

References
Antila, E. M., & Kakkonen, A. (2008). Factors affecting the role of HR managers in international
mergers and acquisitions: A multiple case study. Personnel Review, 37(3), 280-299.
Betley, R. and Noble, I. (2017). Visual Research: An Introduction to Research Methods in
Graphic Design. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Björkman, I. and Søderberg, A.M., 2006. The HR function in large-scale mergers and
acquisitions: the case study of Nordea. Personnel review, 35(6), pp.654-670.
Brueller, N.N., Carmeli, A. and Markman, G.D., 2018. Linking merger and acquisition strategies
to postmerger integration: a configurational perspective of human resource management. Journal
of Management, 44(5), pp.1793-1818.
Mackey, A., and Gass, S. M. (2015). Second language research: Methodology and design.
Routledge.
Marczyk, G., DeMatteo, D., and Festinger, D. (2017). Essentials of research design and
methodology. John Wiley.
Neuman, L. W. (2014). Social research methods. Pearson Education Limited.
Rao-Nicholson, R., Khan, Z., and Stokes, P. 2016. Making great minds think alike: Emerging
market multinational firms’ leadership effects on targets’ employee psychological safety after
cross-border mergers and acquisitions. International Business Review, 25(1), 103-113.
Regis, R. (2008). Strategic Human Resource Management and Development. Excel Books.
Schuler, R., and Jackson, S. 2001. HR issues and activities in mergers and
acquisitions. European Management Journal, 19(3), 239-253.
Stokes, P., Liu, Y., Smith, S., Leidner, S., Moore, N. and Rowland, C., 2016. Managing talent
across advanced and emerging economies: HR issues and challenges in a Sino-German strategic
collaboration. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(20), pp.2310-
2338.

Appendix
Milestone
Research
Activities
First month Second
month
Third
month
Fourth
month
Fifth month Six month
Collecting
information
on research
background
Conducting
literature
review
Determining
research
aims and
objectives
Primary
data
collection
Data
Analysis
Writing
Conclusion

References