Why this report exists
Our 2023 study on company culture kept returning to the same answer. Leaders described the cultural integration of mergers and acquisitions as the hardest part of the work and the least equipped for. Not for lack of will, but because there were no established tools: nothing systematic from the due diligence phase through to long-term integration.
This report is the response. We interviewed eleven seasoned business leaders and experts who drew on their entire careers, sharing insights from M&A cases beyond their current roles. The companies in the cases are anonymised; the learnings are not. The document is written as a practical playbook and a checklist of aspects to consider, from the people and culture side of the deal.
Culture is what keeps people together. The speed of cultural alignment is crucial. You can't afford to wait years for the integration to happen by itself. If people don't feel like they are part of the same team, it is very hard to get anything done.
That is Minna Aila, Executive Vice President at Konecranes, describing the cost of delay. Integration left to happen by itself is integration left to the org chart.
Five cases, five ways an integration can go wrong
The case studies cover a merger of equals that brought roughly 65,000 people together after initial staff reductions, a mid-sized acquisition absorbed fully into the buyer's structures, a series of small and mid-sized acquisitions left to operate autonomously, an acquisition where the cultural side was simply not attended to, and a cross-national acquisition where the distance between the two cultures was recognised early.
Each produced its own failure mode. A merger of equals began with a period of pampering that made radical adjustment late, while competitive pressure demanded more than was being implemented. Full integration moved faster than people could adjust to. Autonomy preserved the acquired company's culture and postponed any shared one. Where culture was neglected, integration lagged years behind the financial and operational one.
Turkka Kuusisto, CEO of Finnair, has learned to read the warning signs before signing:
Based on my experience, the culture in M&As is under-appreciated. Culture assessments help you make the right decisions. Sometimes you need to pull out of some transactions because you find red flags during the assessment: the cultures don't fit together, there's a values mis-match, or challenging aspects in the governance.
The tools leaders asked for
Six practices recur across the interviews. Cultural due diligence carried out before the deal closes. Surveys and pulse checks that track sentiment instead of assuming it. Direct interaction and observation, because remote work makes integration harder and in-person meetings have to be prioritised deliberately. Workshops where values and behaviours are aligned rather than declared. Measures that make cultural integration as visible as financial integration. And communication channels, town halls and Q&A sessions, that let people ask what is happening to them.
Christoph Vitzthum, CEO of Fazer, states the gap plainly:
I think that we should have some kind of culture assessment toolbox at our disposal that we would systematically use.
Satu Teerikangas, Professor of Management and Organization at the University of Turku, points to the calendar:
According to research, integration planning is one of the key success factors in M&As. The earlier it starts, the better it is. Early planning helps during the first weeks and months. Enlightened leaders appoint integration managers early on to steer this process.
What good leadership looks like here
The leaders in these cases were trained in communication, change management and conflict resolution, and were expected to recognise and respect difference rather than dissolve it. Two things separated the integrations that held from the ones that did not.
The first is pace. Juha Ruotsalainen, CEO of Veho, learned to run at different speeds in different parts of the organisation:
We can run fast in some areas or countries, but in others we have to walk baby steps. It is important that we clearly understand why the development pace is different. The root cause for this is often found in the previous culture of the acquired company.
The second is the position of the people who did not choose this. Tuomo Haukkovaara, Partner and Board Member at Boardman Oy, puts it at the centre of the leader's task:
In every acquisition you have to take into account that the employees of the acquired company never applied for a job at the new parent company. As a leader you should be mindful of this, and make efforts to inspire and motivate them to work towards common goals.
One single dominant person can influence the culture and spirit to a large degree, as Kai Konola, CEO of Halton, observed. That is why the report treats leadership behaviour, not the integration plan, as the mechanism that decides the outcome.
What the report concludes
Cultural integration is not a project with an end date. It is a long-term commitment to nurturing and evolving a new organisational culture, and it is the part of an M&A where leadership is most visible and most consequential.
Juho Lipsanen, investor and board member, offers the sentence we hear most often from boards that have learned this the hard way:
What I have noticed is that it is useless to sell a solution if people don't understand or agree what the problem is. So first you have to spend a lot of time, maybe 80% of the time, to explain what's the problem.
The report was written by Ia Adlercreutz and Alexandra Monsi. The full document, with all five case studies, the tools and the list of leaders and experts interviewed, is available as a PDF.