IDENTIFICATION AND RANKING OF EMPLOYEES’ PHYSICAL BEHAVIORS CRITICAL TO MERGERS

Abstract

This study aims to investigate employees’ physical behaviors under the environment of mergers. Chaotic recognition and disorderly hierarchicalization of critical physical behaviors of employees resulting into unsuccessful mergers is the problem under investigation. Employees have power to dictate the fate of mergers; therefore, it is imperative to scientifically underpin the patterns of their physical behaviors while during execution of mergers. The study follows positivist approach as research philosophy. It has identified and developed a hierarchy of physical behaviors that emerge into employees during organizational mergers. It is an empirical study based on formalized in-depth analysis. A specially designed questionnaire has been used for collecting data from a medium sized heterogeneous panel of experts on mergers. Technique of discourse of literature has been employed for identification of behaviors, Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) for hierarchicalization whereas cross-impact matrix multiplication analysis (MICMAC) for investigation of driving and dependence power. Total eleven behaviors have been identified. ISM model depicts that bottom is occupied by conflict, middle by reduced organizational commitment and top by lower productivity. It means that conflict among employees is the most critical physical behavior, reduced organizational commitment is linking and lower productivity is least critical for mergers. MICMAC revealed that five behaviors fall in driving, four in dependent, one in linking and two in autonomous quadrant. The study is based on limited number of experts’ opinion, however, that may be envisaged on larger population for statistical investigation. The study provides insight to the policy makers, planners and executers of mergers.