Last week I posted on a democratically-run company and the challenges they face. Today I came across a business article from our local Pioneer Press titled Lawson’s clash of cultures. The article speaks to locally-based Lawson Software and their acquisition of a Swedish company. There are distinct differences in business approach between the US and Europe:
The problem hasn’t been the technology. It’s been cultural, especially getting Swedish employees accustomed to a new way of doing their jobs, Debes said.
“It’s the Nordic region, so you’re talking about a socialist culture where, even though there are no formal unions, the employees act like they’re unionized,” he said.
They expect management to discuss its decisions with the employees beforehand, give them time to mull it over and allow them to vote on the matter, he said.
The German-born Debes is no stranger to international business, having spent 10 years in Australia with Geac Computers, a Canadian business software vendor. He said that he thinks of himself as open-minded but that the European style is too cumbersome. “It is not the North American style of leadership,” he said.
That last sentence is clear. It becomes even more clear when you read later in the article (emphasis mine):
Debes, who was named CEO the same day the Intentia merger was announced in 2005, makes no apologies for his leadership style, which he calls “demanding.”
You can see the picture being painted by the writer. I suspect the CEO has a fair amount of Dominance to his style and Utilitarian-Individualistic to his motivations (a common CEO profile). The socialist-based Swedish employees probably have a strong Social motivation streak through the existing employees that doesn’t blend well with the CEO’s style. An educated guess only, but based on this (my emphasis):
But he (Debes) acknowledges that employee turnover, at 18 percent, has been higher than he had wanted, and above the 12 to 15 percent that is average for the information technology industry.
Acquisitions are often made by first by financial/market analysis without as much effort put into employee analysis. From earlier in the article (emphasis mine):
“My impression is if they had to do it over again, they wouldn’t integrate with Intentia,” said Paul Hamerman, vice president of enterprise software application research at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.
“Not that I don’t think they can’t work out the cultural differences,” he added. “It’s just been a difficult merger for them.”
I don’t know what was done here to prepare for the acquisition, but I bring it up because some of these cultural rifts could have been identified long before the acquisition. Mergers and acquisitions involve people, whether it be the board members or the shipping department. An investment in identifying the different compositions of both companies is grease to the skids of a potentially difficult merger.