Achieving Successful Cross-Cultural and Management Integration ...

Achieving Successful Cross-Cultural and Management Integration: The Experience of Lenovo and IBM
By Sharona Peng
preserve one’s culture and practices by remaining separate and independent from the
dominant group (Berry, 1983). This mode is likely to take place when members of the
acquired firm want to preserve their culture and organizational systems so they refuse
to become assimilated into the acquiring team in any way or at any level (Nahavandi
and Malekzadeh, 1988; Pan, 2006). According to Nahavandi and Malekzadeh (1988),
these members will resist any attempt to adopt and conciliate, and they will try to
remain totally separate from the acquiring team. If that is allowed by the acquiring
company, they will function as a separate unit under the financial umbrella of the
parent company. In short, there will be minimal cultural exchange between the two
teams, and each will function independently (Nahavandi and Malekzadeh, 1988).
Deculturation
The last mode of acculturation is deculturation which involves losing cultural and
psychological contact with either groups or the other group. In addition, it also
involves remaining an outcast to both (Sales & Mirvis, 1984). This occurs when
members of the acquired firm neither value their own culture, organisational practices
and system, nor they want to be assimilated into the acquiring team. As Berry (1983)
suggests, factors that leads to this mode may include individuals from acquired
company suffering from alienation and lose of identity. As a result, the acquired team
is likely to disintegrate as a cultural identity.
In summary, the concepts of acculturation discussed above have addressed the ways
in which the acquired and acquiring company can use to integrate cultures,
organisational systems and practices of both companies. A total absorption of one into
another is by no means the only mode of adaptation. The mode of acculturation
depends on the way in which the acquiring and acquired company approaches the
implementation of the merger. From the acquired company’s point of view, the degree
to which members want to preserve their own culture and organisational practices and
the degree to which they are willing to adopt the acquirer’s culture and practices will
determine their preferred mode of acculturation (Nahavandi and Malekzadeh, 1988).
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