Intragovernmental Mergers : A case study into the impact on employees by the merger of Region Västerbotten and Västerbottens läns landsting.

Abstract: “How has the merger of Region Västerbotten impacted the employees from a change resistance, merger theory and communication theory perspective”. At the moment there is a demand for governmental organisations to spend money more efficiently and save money where possible from the taxpayers. A results of this pressure is the idea of merging governmental organisations, this in an effort to reduce costs and streamline their core activities. The most recent example of such a governmental merger is the one conducted by Region Västerbotten and Västerbottens Läns Landsting. This merger was conducted because both of these organisations’ core activities go hand in hand, the merger is supposed to help those activities blossom further. In this thesis the effects on employees affected by the merger was looked upon from a change resistance and merger theory perspective. It was concluded that the merger could have been handled better through more involvement of employee suggestions and listening to their opinions in the so called deal negotiation phase leading up to the merger. A number of employees were interviewed regarding their experience with the merger and their opinions on what had worked well and what had not worked. To summarize the opinions of the interviewed employees there were no clear and obvious improvements for them but instead everything had in their opinion become worse in some way.