RESEARCH ANALYSIS /COMPARE AND CONTRAST
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The Schweiger and DeNisi (1991) article is not that recent, so it should be possible to find… 1 answer below »
RESEARCH ANALYSIS /COMPARE AND CONTRAST
Chapter 28, Research Report 28.1 – The realistic merger preview
The Schweiger and DeNisi (1991) article is not that recent, so it should be possible to find something more recent than this article. The point of the exercise is to find another article dealing with communications or information and change.
To that end it may be helpful to:
1. Use the library databases to search on “communication”, “change”, “merger”, or “change” as well as the authors’ names to find related articles. The chapter may provide you with useful search terms as well. Given the difficulty that you may have in finding a direct match, if you find an article that deals with similar issues, that will be sufficient for this exercise.
2. Use Research report 28.1 to generate search terms, as previously suggested. The narrative has useful phrases that can be used for a literature search.
3. You do not want to merely summarize the article. You want to indicate whether the article you found is consistent or inconsistent with the Schweiger and DeNisi (1991) findings. Then you want to discuss what these results, as a whole (both articles together), mean to leaders and managers in terms of being able to consider the effects of communication and information sharing on change efforts.
Research report 28.1 The realistic merger preview
Schweiger, D.M. and DeNisi, A.S. (1991) Communication with employees following a merger: Longitudinal field experiment, Academy of Management Journal, 34(1): 100-35.
Schweiger and DeNisi argued that the functions served by relist job previews-reducing uncertainty and communicating that change managers care and can be trusted-are important to employees facing M&As. They adapted the realistic job preview concept and created a communication programme, which they called the ‘realistic merger preview’. They tested the effectiveness of this approach by conducting a longitudinal experiment involving the merger of two Fortune 500 companies
Data was collected in two plants: an experimental plant in which the preview was introduced and a control plant in which the merger was managed more traditionally.
Employees in both plants received a letter from the CEO announcing the merger. This was the only information workers in the control plant received. Their plant manager, who was not aware of the realistic merger programme in the experimental plant, was simply told that further information would be coming as soon as it was available, in the experimental plant, employees were provided with much more information. Schweiger and DeNisi report that the aim of the realistic merger programme was to:
Provide employees with frequent, honest and relevant information about the merger
Provide them with fair treatment
Answer their questions and concerns to the fullest extent possible.
They received information about layoffs, transfers, promotions, demotions, changes in pay, jobs and benefits. This information was communicated as soon as it was available.
A bimonthly newsletter was sent to each employee in the experimental plant containing details of changes the merger had created, together with answers to employees’ questions. A telephone hotline was answered during working hours by a personnel manager who continually received updated information from the vice president of HR. Questions about general organizational changes were answered but not those concerning individual employees. After working hours, employees calling the hotline reached an answering machine. Answers to questions left on the answering machine were posted on bulletin boards around the plant, and most appeared in the next issue of the newsletter. Finally, the experimental plant’s manager met weekly with the supervisors and employees of each of the eight departments in the plant. Separate meetings were arranged for each department to ensure that changes affecting that department could be specifically addressed, and weekly briefings were prepared jointly by the plant manager and the vice president of HR to supplement these meetings and maintain communication consistency and accuracy across the plant.
Following the merger announcement, employees in the experimental and control plants reacted negatively. However, once the realistic merger preview programme was introduced in the experimental plant, the situation in the plant began to stabilize. Schweiger and DeNisi report that while uncertainty and its associated outcomes did not decline, they stopped increasing, and, overtime, employees’ perceptions of the company’s trustworthiness, honesty and caring and their self-reported performance actually begin to improve and return to preannouncement levels.
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