Organizational identification and cultural differences: Explaining employee attitudes and behavioral intentions during postmerger integration

Abstract

Postmerger integration processes have been studied from the perspectives of organizational identity and organizational culture, but these two perspectives have rarely been integrated. We argue that organizational identification and organizational culture differences give rise to two different sets of individual responses that are both important, but for different types of outcomes. An empirical analysis of a large-scale merger between two service sector companies shows that identification with the postmerger organization positively relates to both behavioral intentions and key attitudinal variables. In contrast, our results show that perceived organizational culture differences are negatively related to attitudinal variables. The effect of perceptions of cultural differences on behavioral intentions is mediated by organizational identification.