Research evidence going back to the 1970s demonstrates that mergers and acquisitions have an unfavorable impact on profitability. They are strongly associated with lowered productivity, labor unrest, higher absenteeism, and poorer accident rates. Depending on which study one reads, 50% to 80% of all mergers and acquisitions turn out to be financially unsuccessful. Keep in mind that most research studies have investigated combinations in which the two firms were rooted originally in the same national culture.

Research also indicates that senior executives rate "underestimating the importance and difficulty of integrating cultures" as a major cause of integration failures.

What will enable any new merger, acquisition, or joint venture to contradict this strong trend? The answer does not lie in massive, exhausting effort. All combinations require that. The answer lies in what you pay attention to. The ingredient missing from many M&As is careful, sustained attention to the cultural aspects of the integration process. Business anthropology, an established field of research and practice, is fully prepared to provide this ingredient.

GlobalWorkshop.com believes that the insights of business anthropology are of greater practical value to an ongoing merger, acquisition, or joint venture when delivered via a process of committed consulting rather than through training workshops. Training workshops, however, can support the overall process.

The following objectives, therefore, address some well-recognized hurdles faced by cross-cultural mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures, and are most effectively delivered via consulting. Training workshops can be developed on an as-needed basis in order to support one or more of these objectives, or other objectives discovered to be uniquely relevant to the combining units. Examples of business anthropologists' objectives are. . .

- to help align leadership, management, and supervisory practices with the new combination's basic values

- to provide guidance about managing the "people factor" in order to maintain productivity and job satisfaction

- to facilitate multi-directional knowledge transfer and organizational learning within the new combination

- to redesign core work processes in a way that involves employee stakeholders

- to help to wisely select personnel for cross-border and cross-unit assignments

- to develop global competencies in key managers and supervisors

- to reconceptualize performance management and career planning

- to align differing benefits and compensation packages

- to facilitate the productivity of geographically dispersed "virtual" teams

Consulting support for any integration process requires considerable time. It cannot be effectively provided over just a few days. Business anthropologists and related specialists may need to be on-site periodically over a period of weeks or months.

If business anthropologists are first engaged after a fledgling integration effort begins to falter, the time commitment will be greater than if their services had been engaged from the moment that the merger, acquisition, or joint venture began operations.

Training workshops developed in support of an integration effort have varying durations, typically one, two, or three days.

- senior business anthropologists and anthropologically-trained organizational development specialists with years of successful experience as internal and external consultants

- familiarity with the national cultures and the industry cultures involved in the combination

- experience-based expertise in helping working groups build relationships across a variety of differences

Business anthropologists never bring to the firm that has engaged their services a set of solutions developed for some other firm. They develop precisely targeted solutions for unique cases. Their work is emergent, meaning that each phase of the process is devised on the basis of what was learned during a previous phase.

Nevertheless, it is possible to state a general procedure that roughly captures much of what business anthropologists do as well as the order in which they (often) do it:

- Set goals and parameters with senior executives of both combining units

- Conduct initial soundings within both units (or within one function in both units)

- Based on initial learnings, sharply broaden the scope of qualitative inquiry

- Develop a comprehensive analysis of challenges related to the integration

- Report findings & recommendations to decision-makers [final step when due diligence assistance was requested]

- Work in collaborative partnership with cross-cultural communication trainers and organizational design specialists

- Help to plan, and to facilitate, the efforts of internal integration teams