The reaction of managers to the pre- acquisition stage of a corporate merger: A qualitative study

Conclusion The study in this article provided insights into the emotional needs of managers during the Preacquisition Stage of a potential acquisition. One manager claimed that mergers are the wave of the future. If one of six managers believes this in the retail industry, then we might assume that one out of every six employees has thought this at some time in his/her working life or at least thought about how mergers in general affect his/her working life. Therefore, it seems vital that retail employees have the attitude that Acquisitions, of course, produce stress, but they are not always bad experiences that end up hurting the employees. With the opposite attitude, the Preacquisition Stage will most likely be fraught with low employee morale, increased stress, resistance to change, higher turnover, and lower productivity.The managers in the current study shared their reactions to the announcement of a potential merger. As can be expected, much stress and uneasiness was occurring. The suggested interventions in this article will help the EAP counselor respond to the stress through crisis, preventive, and educational methods. The employee assistance counselor can no longer wait for the merger to occur; rather, he/she must be involved early in the merger process, during the Preacquisition Stage. If employee assistance counselors do not begin insisting on early involvement, business mergers may remain on a contractual level only. The contractual level allows Hunsaker and Coombs (1988) to conclude that the psychological needs of the merging work forces are not typically considered, and people issues are mishandled as the acquirer improvises instead of following a strategically designed, systematically conducted program for corporate integration (p. 57). A systematically conducted program may help managers and employees feel more secure about their own careers; thus, about mergers in general.