Company Presentation

Culture

Professor Keith Lipscomb

BUS 325: Global Human Resource Management

Felicia Griffin

January 27, 2019

Discussion

My fictitious company

Geoplan Company is a planning and architectural consultation firm which offers different planning and architectural services such as surveying, urban design, urban planning, regional planning, and architectural services. Geoplan Company is located in Kenya and conducts its operation nation-wide as it addresses the needs of clients from the public and private sector. Geoplan Company has 150 employees all of whom are Kenyan nationals. The company has a simple organization structure which enables the Director to monitor all the company’s operations.

The fictitious company merged with

Rand Masters is an engineering and architectural company which specializes in offering a range of engineering and architectural services including urban planning, urban design, architectural services, and consultation services for civil engineering. The headquarters of Rand Masters is located in India and it has other company offices located in China, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Mauritius. The company has over 9,000 employees and an organizational structure that enables the functionality of every level of management.

How to unify company culture

1. Workplace culture: This is a very crucial step which emphasizes understanding the cultures, mission, vision, goals, and structures of the two companies better. During this step, the two companies can evaluate the attitudes, behaviors, and priorities of different employees.

2. Diagnose the differences that matter: This step is important to identify and measure the extent of differences that exist between the two companies. Among the factors/components which should be diagnosed include people, geographic locations, managerial styles, and units and their functions.

3. Accentuate the positives: This is an important step in cultural integration which focuses on identifying and cultivating the best attributes of each organization. The merger should emphasize adopting cultures which can be easily adopted by employees and one which can be beneficial to the merger.

4. Improve the communication tools: The merger should create better communication channels which enable employees to interact with one another. This will promote cultural integration since teamwork can be achieved more naturally if people connect with each other easily (Dianova, 2017).

5. Improve collaboration tools: The merger should form teams and departments which include employees from the two companies. This will enable employees to share different knowledge and ideas making it easier to develop an acceptable culture (Dianova, 2017).

6. Identify the challenges: This step involves identifying the barriers to cultural integration such as employees’ dissatisfaction or complaints among others. This is an important step since it encourages collaboration in problem-identification and problem-solving.

7. Training and education: This step involve creating new workplace policies which will also be improved in order to promote workplace diversity and address different challenges of integration in any given situation. This step should emphasize the accountability of every employee since their efforts which will determine the success or failure of the merger.

8. Monitoring and structural motivation: This is the last step which requires managers to monitor the progress of cultural integration to identify more possible areas for improvement (Maxfield, 2015). The manager should also use a simple reward system to recognize employees’ contribution to cultural integration.

References

David Maxfield, (2015). How to effectively merge Company Cultures. Retrieved from https://www.vitalsmarts.com/crucialskills/2015/02/how-to-effectively-merge-company-cultures/

Yulia Dianova, (2017). Practical steps to create a unified culture in a company with multiple offices. Retrieved from https://www.axiapr.com/blog/3-practical-steps-to-create-a-unified-culture-in-a-company-with-multiple-offices