A Comprehensive Guide to Mergers & Acquisitions: Managing the Critical Success Factors Across Every Stage of the M&A Process

12. Communication

Introduction

Communication is a critical activity in M&As because it has a tremendous bearing on value creation. Therefore, communication needs to be managed carefully in a systematic way.

M&As are usually characterized with a high degree of uncertainty especially due to changes and associated ambiguity. At the same time, in an M&A, there are numerous challenges to learning, for instance by knowledge transfer, and to developing a shared view of a new organizational reality. However, an M&A lacks effective communication due to various reasons, such as misinterpretations because of organizational and national cultural differences, that result in conflicts and a lack of trust between the people of the two organizations as well ...