Aspects of Cultural, Leadership and Shareholder Differences in a Research Paper

Aspects of Cultural, Leadership and Shareholder Differences in a Merger - Research Paper Example Cultural difference was defined by the American Heritage English Dictionary as â€Å"The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions and all other products of human work or thought† (Barrett and Eneroth, 2012). This signifies that when a group of people work together or spend time together, they develop a pattern of habits that become the culture of an organization. Now when another company merges to form a joint venture, the human resource of both the companies have to work in coordination with one another, although they are used to different ways of working or spending time. This is where diversity or difference arises in an organization. Culture in case of private companies are usually quite random and is highly influenced by the decisions of the senior managers, while in case of public companies, group dependability is higher. In such cases, cultural difference is considered to be an obstacle to the success of the alliance (DeChesare, 20 13). In a survey conducted by CFO Research Services in 2004, it was found that among every five respondents, one of them considered cultural clashes to be the primary reason for alliance failure. This raises a question in the minds of readers about the true perception regarding cultural difference during joint ventures or mergers (Chanlat, Davel and Dupuis, 2013, P. 250-251).     Vebego and Risse successfully drove this joint venture for a span of two years. However, the problem had started with the entry of a third party called Westrom Group, which was a similar company like, The Risse Group. The intention of a public-private joint venture was to bring in the knowledge and experience of the public company and since private companies are good at handling business aspect, they can take care of marketing and administration segment carefully. However, the issues were created after the entrance of the third party because the existing companies made the new organization responsible f or many significant decisions, but only the support staffs were considered within the joint venture to handle the operations. The policies and framework for including a third partner were not rightly decided which had augmented the challenges for the joint venture. In this scenario, the cultural transformation tool (CTT) developed by Richard Barrett would be the best way to discuss the lesson learned from this situation, thereby stating the probable recommendations in this context. The CTT assist in the cultural evolution of the organization, which further helps the leaders to manage the operations. Barrett introduced a consciousness model with seven levels, which are evolutionary in character. He did some modifications to Maslow’s Hierarchy model. In 1998, he had developed a model, which was also called CTT. As can be seen in Figure 1 below, there are seven levels of consciousness such as service, making a difference, transformation, cohesion, self-esteem, relationship and s urvival (Barrett Values Centre, 2009a).