Cultural Impacts of Merging Two Different Health Care Institutions (Essay Sample)

Cultural Impacts of Merging Two Different Health Care Institutions
Name
Institution
Cultural Impacts of Merging Two Different Health Care Institutions
Introduction
Growth is vital for maintaining the dynamics, viability, and value-promoting ability of an organization. A growth-focused organization is not only capable of attracting the most productive clients, but retaining them as well. As Goetz and Watkins (2008) denote, growth yields profits and increases shareholder value, with firms augmenting this aspect by integrating operations through mergers. Mergers and acquisitions, for that reason, are quickly becoming vital components of business strategy, as they extend product lines and provide a means of acquiring a competitive edge in the market niche. Like in the two organizations in the merger, dealing with the change events necessitates not only considering the behaviors, but equal incorporation of the ensuing outcomes and behavior drivers too (Gardine & Kosmitzki, 2008). Once the business dynamics of the merger are complete and productive course defined, the focus shifts to a crucial operational line: integration. Considering that the desirable outcomes of the new enterprise rely heavily on the structural underpinnings of the two healthcare organizations, the degree of alignment is crucial for total assimilation into the acquirer.
Effects of Culture on the New Combined Organization
Although the merger between the two healthcare organizations was a success, at least from the resultant homogeneity, a few cultural clashes were evident. Inside the two organizations, several different cultures exist because of people’s orientations in terms of gender, ethnicity, and nationalities. Organizational culture, though, seldom possesses norms, values, assumptions and projections, which fuse all members; subcultures exist with conflicting presumptions regarding reality. As Matsumoto and Juang (2008) denote, despite the high level of cultural alignment of the two organizations, tension is highly probable from the areas with the least configuration. For illustration, the two organizations have leaders drawn from different class and professional backgrounds; they may find that collision of approaches to decision-making or how to address people at corporate gatherings is inevitable. The merger in question alters the nature, orientation, and disposition of the two partners, meaning it will require several months for employees to feel they have fully acknowledged one another’s cultural standings. Through compelling employees to deal with new managers and new team members, there could be serious worries of raising sensitive issues, which could lead to an ‘us versus them’ scenario. Trust amongst the team members could be nominal, as the new combined organization may find itself in a cultural dilemma due to loss of alliance amongst the employees in the new-fangled business combination. It will be difficult attaining the synergies initially present and tackling critical issues, if at all this conflict will rise often in the new organization.
To another end, the problem of ambiguity within the merged entity may arise.
While the two firms merged to establish a new unit, the employees, initially operating independently, will have no choice but adapt to the resultant infrastructure and corporate environment (Goetz & Watkins, 2008). Cultural changes will be inevitable, as the two previously autonomous firms showed less similarities in work culture and once they fused, their objectives became different from their combined employee base. As the proposed cultural transformations begin to sink in, some employees may exit the new organization or prefer translocation to other departments with familiar staff, reinforcing awkward employee alliances. Torn between allegiance for the entire organization and their direct bosses, employees may be confused on which directives they ought to pursue. Inadequate reinforcement of the cultural change paradigms will spell out contradictory undertones, so keeping employees unrelated from the focus of the new organization. These types of discrepancies in the acculturation procedure could be players in either or both of the incorporation approaches or the inaptness of the two partners’ cultures.
Ensuring the Staff in the Combined Organization Deliver Quality
Even though the main reason for this merger was improvement in healthcare delivery, the common cause of failure in post-merger integrations is the lack of systematic planning and haste in implementing one-size-fits all paradigms. A vital step in maintaining a competitive stance in the new organization is through promoting collaborative intervention (Aberg & Diane, 2004) that would focus the organization’s effort toward a common purpose, instead of drifting apart. Considering that it takes time to comprehend and deploy a vision for the resultant organization, it is particularly imperative to streamline the efforts to ally people and processes to realize the best targets. The following steps will be necessary for creating a collaborative approach that realizes a new corporate identity and backs the configuration of an integrated corporate core strategy:
Acknowledging the Differences. Since the reason for this merger was service improvement, it is important to appreciate the differences within the new entity and devise forward-thrusting strategies. The rationale here will not just be resting on operational strategy, but rather identifying and evaluating the uniqueness of each organization in the merger. For these two organizations, the differences exists in the value systems and corporate culture, leadership styles, staff levels and qualifications; for that reason, steps to maintain the productive business modules, whilst building a platform of homogeneity will allow the organizations to leverage each other to boost performance.
Knowing the People. Identifying the key stakeholders in the new entity and addressing their fears and concerns is paramount. What is more, announcing an integration core team drawn from diverse functions of both entities would be critical for constructing and tracing the integration process and timelines till the completion of all the post-merger arrangements. Restructuring the new organizational outfit will be rapid, so identification of priorities follows the middle-level management’s competitive agenda. Such a step will ensure steadiness and helps thwart the normal apprehensions that transformations spill in the minds of employees and stakeholders.
Engage, Engage and Engage: Just like in many other organizations, effective communication is key to success of any merger, as it has the power to mend or break the post-merger integration. An effective communication strategy will be necessary to establish a strong management engagement from day one of the merger, with a modest, honest, and candid approach to win the integrity of the employees (Goetz & Watkins, 2008). A routine two-way feedback mechanism will be apposite so that there is adequate input from the new organization to quantify effectiveness of the integration. More importantly, connecting leaders and employees with supervisors, organizing networking events, and setting up online social-networking portals will speed up the merger process while maintaining competitiveness.
Standardize Business Processes First: Whereas it might be tempting to delve into which systems we are going to retain for the integrated entity, it is prudent to identify the ones having the latent to provide the best support. In so doing, understanding how the new business plunge forward takes center stage, or else the decision of systems to preserve and which to discard will rely largely on interior politics and less on tangible corporate specifications and needs. For illustration, a bigger portion of our clientele base need support in streamlining operations and enhancing business processes through reconstruction even before we started evaluating our specific ERP systems. The two merged organizations had serious change management issues even before the merger; employees have several probable sources of resistance to a heterogeneous operational environment. New roles, ambiguity regarding reporting structures, job security, and a myriad of other issues that derail an ‘out of the box’ initiative will determine the productivity of the new entity.
What the Organization Will Look Like In Terms of Systems and Shape
Because systems require a high level of dependency and autonomy, after the merger, it will be intricate integrating systems from the two different organizations. Whilst seeking a technological solution, the management approaches to integration particularly for the resulting heterogeneous system layout is of great urgency (Aberg & Diane, 2004). Before the merger, the two healthcare institutions had their own systems; system operation overlay will occur in the new organization. A situation may arise in the new entity, with one organization neglecting the requirements of the other, and regarding its information systems as superior. Winning the trust of information system employees from the two organizations in the merger will erase the notion that the acquirer’s information systems are hegemonic. The underlying issue here is that information system personnel from the two different healthcare organizations have a more profound knowledge of their own information systems as opposed to the users. Because system integration entails a tradeoff between existing systems against the novel model, it will be discreet for the management to execute a post-merger systems implementation with a view to realizing numerous complicated technological orientations.
Conclusion
The progressively changing cultural beliefs and practices call for ade...