What happens with company culture when high and low masculine cultures merge? A case study of the Joint Venture Sony Ericsson

Abstract: In today’s global market, international mergers are very common. Different companies with various cultures, start working together. There is a limited amount of literature about what really happens with the company culture when companies merge. There are also few case studies on culture integration of merging companies. Therefore, we would like to make such study and Sony Ericsson provides us with a perfect case, because of their cultural background. The purpose with our dissertation is to investigate what happens with company culture when a company with high masculinity and a company with low masculinity merge. To study this subject we will try to identify important dimensions concerning masculinity and to develop hypotheses about what happens with company culture when the companies merge. Empirically, we want to try this theory by investigate the company culture, with focus on masculinity, at Sony Ericsson today, five years after their merger. Since Sony and Ericsson have roots in Japan and Sweden and these two countries are very dissimilar when it comes to company culture and the level of masculinity, this specific company provide us with the perfect example to study. We have made a qualitative study at Sony Ericsson, because our research is descriptive. We conducted an interview and interviewed five persons at Sony Ericsson, one woman and four men. After conducting our study we have concluded that the integration of masculinity at Sony Ericsson has been very successful. There have been no major culture shocks, according to our respondents. Keywords: Merger, Company Culture, Masculinity