Creating Corporate Culture: a study of strategies employed to cultivate High Performance Mentality within Sony Ericsson

Abstract: The current expansion of mergers and acquisitions forces new postmerged organizational cultures to take form, and requires solid strategies for handling that procedure. Research indicate that at least half of all mergers fail in creating expected synergies, and that the reason for failing is assumed integration issues such as culture clashes. Creating a strong organizational culture is often appointed a principal factor for managing a post-merged situation. This study focuses on analyzing the acculturation process of Sony Ericsson, challenged by fusing Japanese and Swedish companies into a joint venture. The purpose is defining which criteria govern the strategic process of creating corporate culture in order for this to illuminate possible future problems. By applying an interpretative approach, with certain descriptive elements, I propose to illustrate the concepts of organizations and cultures as being process-based rather than structured systems. On analyzing the case in light of theoretical discussions and earlier research, three statements connected to post-merger success emerged: 1)Organizational type marginally affects the ability of creating a strong corporate culture 2)Merger type affects the ability of creating a strong corporate culture to a certain extent 3)Integration process extensively affects the ability of creating a strong corporate culture Creating corporate values strongly connected to the employees? private norms was also found essential to succeeding in creating a strong culture. This further involves the need for providing a combination of top-down and bottom-up strategies on creating a long-term corporate culture.