Employee's attitude towards mergers

Employee's attitudes towards mergers

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Abstract

Mergers between two corporate entities is a common practice in the corporate world in the pursuit of organizational synergy that is brought about when two entities come together. However, mergers rarely lead to success that is envisioned during the merging process due to a number factor. Most researcher studies have explored the financial and strategic factors that lead to failure of mergers, but limited research has been directed towards human aspects that contribute to failure. The current research proposal will explore how employee attitudes towards a merger contribute to its failure or success. 500 participants will be recruited into the study and three questionnaires will be used to explore the topic. Emotional intelligence, NEO personality inventory model, and employee attitude towards a merger are the questionnaires to be used and data analysis will be conducted to understand the relationship employee attitude towards mergers.

Methodology

This section will focus on the research methodology for this study. The topics covered in this section are participants, research design, measures, procedures, and data analysis. The contents of this section are supported by literature and field research. It will give a detailed overview of how the research study will be conducted. This section is important because it forms a significant part of a researcher’s credibility; therefore, it is important to outline how data from participants is derived.

Participants

The participants section will discuss how participants will be recruited in the study. Major demographics such as gender and age will be included because it may affect the outcomes of the research study. The research study will consist of 500 participants drawn from two fortune 500 companies that have taken part in a merger within New York City. This will ensure that the participants have experienced a merger and it impacts on an organizations and will be able to a give a detailed account of it. The participants will be recruited on a voluntary basis. To ensure that the study accurately reflects employee attitudes towards mergers, the participants will be drawn from staff positions of all levels. Out of the 500 participants, 350 (70%) will be drawn from positions below the management levels and 150 (30%) will be drawn from the management levels. The researcher will use this ratio due to the fact that these percentages are considered to represent the most commonly pyramidal hierarchical structure in an organization (Yang & Wang, 2012). The researcher will select ages, background, gender of the participants at random to ensure the data is comprehensive. The survey questionnaire will be send to the participants through e-mail to the firm’s internal email address. To minimize the work on the participants, the survey questionnaire will appear as a link to that the participants can participate in the survey through the link. To ensure confidentiality, the survey will be anonymous and responses will be sent to the researcher directly through the web link. A reminder email will be sent two weeks after the first email to encourage participants to complete the survey. The survey will be closed after five weeks and responses will no longer be taken from participants.

Research design

There are seven variables in the study. The first variable is employee attitude based on their emotional intelligence (IEs). The next five variables are based on the big five personality attitudes derived from the five-factor model of personality. These are extraversion or surgency; agreeableness; conscientiousness; neuroticism (emotional stability); culture (openness to experience). Emotional intelligence and these five attitudes will form the independent variables. The independent variable is a factor that is varied. The dependent variable in the study is attitudes towards a merger. The independent variable influences the dependent variable. Therefore, the researcher will examine employee attitude towards a merger. The survey questionnaires will collect data from employees regarding their perception and attitudes towards a merger. The questions will have rating scales, whereby the participants will give their feedback by checking off boxes at the end of the questions that suit their attitudes towards a merger. The rating scale will range from one to five, with 1 being the least values and 5 being the highest value representing their attitude. The answers will be anonymous to ensure that the opinions from employees are accurate and reflect their attitudes. The responses will then be grouped together under different personality traits of the participants and how they respond to each questionnaire.

Measures

The study will utilize three types of questionnaires to measure the employee attitudes towards a merger. The first questionnaire will contain personality-type questions that were designed account for the various types of personality traits without overlapping. The second questionnaire will address the emotional intelligence of employees, which refers to the ability of individuals to observe other people’s emotions, and use the information to infer actions and information in their minds.

1. Personality: People possess different personality traits and this questionnaire will allow participants to identify themselves as having one of the following personality traits:

Extraversion is trait that is marked by conspicuous engagement with the external world. Extraverts are full of energy and enjoy interacting with others. They are action-oriented and enthusiastic persons. Additionally, they are able to assert themselves and have high group visibility. On the other hand, introverts have limited energy and social engagements (Costar and McCrae, 2013). They are less social and tend to be deliberate and low-key.

Agreeableness reflects personal concerns for harmony. Individuals who are agreeable value social harmony and they are trustworthy, generous, considerate, kind, and willing to compromise. They are also optimistic of human nature. Since this trait is social, research studies have shown that agreeableness positively correlates with the quality of relationships with others.

Conscientiousness is a personality trait that is associated with the tendency to act dutifully, show self-discipline, and to aim for achievement against expectations. It is also associated with how individuals direct, regulate, and control their impulses.

Neuroticism is the propensity to experience negative emotions such as depression, anger, and anxiety. According to the theory of personality by Eysencks, neuroticism is closely associated with limited tolerance for stress or aversive stimuli. Individuals who score high on this trait are vulnerable to stress and are emotionally unstable..

Openness to experience is characterized by a general appreciation of imagination, variety of experiences, adventure, art, and new ideas. Persons who are open to experience are curious, willing to try novel things, and are sensitive to beauty. Furthermore, individuals with this trait hold unconventional beliefs and are more innovative. These persons are less resistant to change, and this trait is of significance to the current topic of research. Sample items that measure this trait include having a rich vocabulary, excellent ideas, vivid imagination, quickness in understanding things and preference for difficult words.

Specifically, the NEO personality inventory, which is a questionnaire measure of the five-factor model, will be used to assess the personality traits of the participants (Costar & McCrae, 2013). It is a standard measure of the five dimensions of the five-factor model and it is used in counseling and business settings.

The five domains of the five-factor model measured by NEO personality inventory give a broad description of personality, while the facet scales enable a detailed assessment. The five factors and their associated facets are:

· Extraversions: (warmth, assertiveness, excitement-seeking, gregariousness, activity, and positive emotions.

· Neuroticism: (anxiety, depression, hostility, impulsiveness, self-conscientiousness, vulnerability).

· Agreeableness: (modesty, altruism, trust, compliance, tender-mindedness, straightforwardness).

· Openness to experience: (fantasy, aesthetics, action, feelings, values, ideas).

· Conscientiousness: (self-discipline, competence, achievement-striving, order, deliberation, dutifulness).

The fowling measures will be used to evaluate personality:

Emotional responses

Anger: Siegel developed the scale that will be used. It mirrors the degree to which individuals hold their anger when they are angry. This test has test-retest reliability of 0.75 and an internal consistency of 0.84. Validity of this scale has bee supported by supposed pattern of relations with other inventories developed to evaluate hostility or anger.

Depression: Caplan et al developed the scale that will be used and the items measure how people may perceive themselves, their jobs, and the duration they felt that way. The items will be rated on a 4-point scales ranging fro 1 (a little of the time or never) to 43 (all the time). The reliability of this scale is 0.83.

Well-being: the General Health Questionnaire will be used to measure this response. It is the most reliable indicator of psychological distress because it detects various psychological disorders such as depression or anxiety and it is also valid and reliable across different cultures. The items will be rated on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree ) to 4 strongly agree).

Loneliness: The measure that will be used was developed by Russell, Peplau and Ferguson 91978). The concurrent and preliminary validity of this measure is shown by correlations with individual-reports of concurrent loneliness and associated emotional states.

Attitudinal behaviour (responses to a merger)

Organizational commitment: Allen and Meyer (1990) created the scale that will be used. It is composed of three factors of organizational commitment: continuance, affective commitment, and normative commitment. Reliabilities of thee factors are .75, .87, and .79 respectively.

Withdrawal intentions: the scal etaht wil be used is widely utilized in different research literatures and it is modeled on the scale developed by Mobley, Griffeth, Meglino and Hand (1978). The measure will evaluate withdrawal intentions of an employee for the organization. Made up of three items that will be evaluated on a 5-pont scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

Job insecurity: Caplan et al (1990) created the measure that will be used and evaluates questions related to job insecurity in the future. It will be evaluated n a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (very uncertain) to 5 (very certain). The items will then be reverse scores.

Job satisfaction: Spector (1994) in a job satisfaction survey created the measure that will be used. It is made up of 36-items and 9 facets that assesses attitudes towards job satisfaction and related aspects of the job.

Social relationships: the scale that will be used was adopted from Madsen, Miller, and John (2005). The scale has five-item that is modeled after Hanpachen’s margin in life scale. The median alpha for these scales is 0.79, which shows internal consistency.

2. Emotional intelligence (EI): Since the concept of emotional intelligence was introduced by Goleman’s book in 1996, the concept has flourished in both commercial and academic disciplines. The term was initially coned by Mayer and Salovey in 1990 and they defined it as the ability to perceive emotions, to comprehend emotions, to access and create emotions to aid thought and intellectual development. This definition was grounded on the ability model of emotional intelligence that comprises four strands: strand 1 (perceiving emotions), strand 2 (using emotions), strand 3 (understanding emotions), and strand 4 (managing emotions).

The influence of this construct on the overall organization has been discussed in various literatures (Mayer and Salovey, 1997).

The Ability Model will be used to measure participants’ emotional intelligence. Specifically the Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2000) Emotional Intelligence test or MSCEIT version 2.0 will be used in this study. This will act as a performance measure, based on the number of correct answers given and assesses how well an individual solves emotion-laden problems across four domains such as perception, use, understanding, and management of emotions. A high emotional intelligence will be considered a good trait, whereas a low score would be associated with poor skills when overcoming stress, which imply future failure of mergers (Mayer and Salovey, 1997).

The personality trait will be part of the independent variables and will be measured using the NEO inventory model.

Emotional intelligence will be measured using the MSCEIT ability-based assessment tool. It has a good reliability scale of r= 0.91 and takes approximately 40 minutes to complete. Organizational merger is the dependent variable, which is being measured in the study.

3. Attitudes towards a merger: employees may either have favorable or unfavorable attitudes towards a merger (Eriksson, 2004). In order to measure the attitudes of employees towards mergers, the researchers will design a test that would comprise questions that measure job satisfaction aspect and rate the responses as positive or negative. The test will contain questions that gauge the employees’ attitudes towards change cause by the merger, emotional distress, and negative attitudes that result out of a merger. Studies have shown that employees who have negative attitudes towards a merger tend to be resistant to change and will experience distress and overall negative attitudes. The following measures will be used:

Support for change: The measure that will be used is a fourteen-scale that was initially developed by Hanpachen and later altered by Miller, Madsen, and John. The items will be rated in a 7-point Likert scale r aging from 1 (very unlikely) to 7 (very likely).

Resistance to change: This measure was initially developed by Oreg (2003) and it is used to measure an individual’s likelihood to resist change. This scale will be used to account for the personal-difference element of resistance to change and to predict responses to certain forms of change. It is a 6-point Likert scale that ranges from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree).

Procedure

Participants will be required to complete questions regarding their basic information before answering the research questionnaires. These questions will include age, gender and their management positions. This information is vital because they can influence the employees’ perception towards a merger. The first questionnaire to be administered to the participants is the NEO personality inventory questionnaire that measures the five personality traits. The second questionnaire will be the Mayer Salovey and Caruso (2000) emotional intelligence tests or MSCEIT, which measures emotional intelligence. The third questionnaire will be the questionnaire designed by the researcher to measure the attitudes of the employees towards a merger and their level of job satisfaction after the merger. The three questionnaires will measure the dependent variable, which is a merger. The dependent variable is the variable being tested and measured in the research study. The independent variables in the study are the personalities of the employees, the emotional intelligence and their attitudes towards a merger. The independent variable is the variable that is altered by the researcher or controlled to test the effects on the dependent variable. Therefore, the dependent variable is “dependent” on the independent variable. Researchers vary the independent variable to observe changes on the dependent variable.

Implication/future research

This research study focused only on employee attitudes towards a merger. However, the causes of merger failures are diverse and it includes financial and strategic issues. Future research studies should focus on how all these factors comprising human resource issues contribute to failures of mergers and acquisitions. By carrying out research on how these multiple factors contribute to failures of mergers, strategies will be developed to guide mergers in the future to avoid failures.

Secondly, there is limited research on how human resource issues contribute to the success or failures of mergers. There is need for more research on how human resource issues affect success or failures of mergers because evidence is coming up showing that failures of mergers is caused by human resource issues rather than financial or strategic issues.

Appendix 1

NEO Personality inventory

Characteristics	Standard
N1 Anxiety	(1)
N2 Angry Hostility	(1)
N3 Depression	(1)
N4 Self-Consciousness	(1)
N5 Impulsiveness	(1)
N6 Vulnerability	(1)
E1 Warmth	(1)
E2 Gregariousness	(1)
E3 Assertiveness	(1)
E4 Activity	(1)
E5 Excitement Seeking	(1)
E6 Positive Emotions	(1)
O1 Openness to Fantasy	(1)
O2 Openness to Aesthetics	(1)
O3 Openness to Feelings	(1)
O4 Openness to Actions	(1)
O5 Openness to Ideas	(1)
O6 Openness to Values	(1)
A1 Trust	(1)
A2 Straightforwardness	(1)
A3 Altruism	(1)
A4 Compliance	(1)
A5 Modesty	(1)
A6 Tender-Mindedness	(1)
C1 Competence	(1)
C2 Order	(1)
C3 Dutifulness	(1)
C4 Achievement Striving	(1)
C5 Self-Discipline	(1)
C6 Deliberation	(1)
N Neuroticism
E Extraversion
O Openness to Experience
A Agreeableness
C Conscientiousness

Appendix 2

References

Costar, P. & McCrae, R. (2013). Personality in Adulthood: A Five-Factor Theory Perspective. Hoboken: McMillan.

Eriksson, C. B. (2004). The effects of change programs on employees’ emotions. Personnel Review, 33(1), 110-126.

Gelman, A. & Hill, J. (2006). Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical regressions. New York: Cengage.

Mayer, J. D., & P. Salovey. (1997). What is Emotional Intelligence? Edited by Peter Salovey and David J. Sluyter. Educational Development and Emotional Intelligence. Educational Implications. Basic Books.

Mayer, J. D., D. Caruso, & P. Salovey. (2000). Emotional Intelligence Meets Traditional Standards for intelligence. Intelligence, 27:267-298.