Managing Corporate Identity in Post Merger Integration

Master's Thesis from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0 (A), University of Applied Sciences Ludwigshafen (IMC-MBA), language: English, abstract: When corporations are merging a tendency towards standardisation of organisations, processes and systems arises. Mergers of companies also lead to a concentration of increasingly larger trusts and holdings. Still the corporation is supposed to remain unmistakable and unique in order to preserve its attractiveness for customers, employees, suppliers, investors, in short, for a network of stakeholders. Only corporate identity (CI) has the efficiency range required to address and reach all these groups whose needs have to be considered. This present work examines the concept of corporate identity, its application in the corporate environment, and the opportunities for the targeted and strategic steering under the background of mergers and acquisitions. The goal is to develop a concept and an approach how to start working on corporate identity and to set interventions during the postmerger process to support a successful integration. For the reasons of the different meanings and the different understanding of the terms 'Corporate Identity' and 'Mergers & Acquisitions' (M&A) the present work develops both a structural model for the analysis of the individual components of corporate identity and a phase model for the configuration of integration. Based on this analysis the contexts of effects between and the opportunities for influencing the individual dimensions of CI are proven within the scope of postmerger integration (PMI), and instruments for the targeted impact and steering are represented. The validity of the elaborated approach of CI management within the framework of PMI is examined within the frame of two case studies of the two largest telecommunication companies presently operating in Germany. Activities are deducted from the results of the secondary analysis and from the empirical studies and are summarised in terms of a CIoriented model of procedure for postmerger integration optimised for success.