Date of Conferral

2015

Degree

Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.)

School

Management

Advisor

John House

Abstract

Executives planning for an organizational merger often neglect or overlook the importance of creating a positive organizational culture. Researchers have demonstrated that organizational culture is important to the success of mergers. Workers' compensation industry executives who managed mergers successfully often includ organizational culture in their merger strategy. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the strategies that business executives used to unify organizational cultures during an organizational merger. The population for the study consisted of 3 CEOs with operations in northern Florida, who successfully merged companies within the workers' compensation managed care industry. For each of these participants, success was self-reported and measured by internal financial metrics. Semistructured interviews were used to collect information regarding successful strategies from experiences during past mergers. Interpretations from interview data were then triangulated with CEOs' emails, executive memoranda, and previously administered employee surveys. The results of this study reflect successful strategies that were used in previous mergers. The data analysis resulted in themes that indicate executives within the workers' compensation managed care industry need to ensure that organizational culture is included with financial metrics during mergers. The implications of these findings promote social change as employees become a part of newly combined organizations and may have a more positive and cooperative work effort to strive for organizational and individual success.

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