Importance of Leadership in Merger and acquisition
Leadership vs Management:
Leadership and management tend to work together like a glove and a hand. Management and leadership are not the same approach, but they complement each other and can be linked together. Both roles are vital parts of an organization. Managers achieve the desired goals through the key functions of planning and budgeting, organizing and staffing, problem solving and controlling. Leaders on the other hand has vision, set a direction, align people, motivate and inspire. Leadership deals with leading a group of people, whereas management focuses on accountability. Management often fails to focus on responsibility for people. Leadership is always responsible for people.
Leadership Approaches:
Leaders set the tone, cadence and discipline of a merger or acquisition. The selection of integration leaders relays the importance placed on business acumen, technical expertise and leadership.
The most important approaches that respondents believed to be important to the success of a merger or acquisition are:
1. Clarifying Strategy & Direction.
Ensuring the business rationale is clear and widely understood, developing and communicating the vision for the new organization, and helping employees see and understand the benefits of the merger or acquisition for themselves and for the business as a whole.
2. Involvement Strategies.
Meaningfully involving employees in decisions and plans that affect them in the change efforts and initiatives beginning to end, including involving key organizational leaders, and making
appropriate use of transition teams and cross-company task forces to make and execute plans
and decisions about the integration of the two firms.
3. Communication Strategies.
Extensive, candid communication about the status and progress of change, including repeated opportunities for employees to hear directly from change leaders and decision-makers.
Gender role in Merger & Acquisition:
The second area of exploratory work regarding male versus female leadership is likely inspired by two factors:
1. biological sex proving an unlikely determinant of the different leadership styles
2. persistent beliefs that differences in male versus female leadership do indeed exist and the consequent view that other different determinants of leader effectiveness must also exist.
Kabacoff (1998) finds that women tend to be more highly rated on empathy(demonstrating an active concern for people and their needs, forming close, supportive relationships with others), and communication (stating clear expectations for others, clearly expressing thoughts and ideas, maintaining flow of communications) than men. Women are also more highly rated on people skills (sensitivity to others, likeableness, ability to listen and to develop effective relationships with peers and with those to whom they report). However, they are not seen as more outgoing (acting in an extroverted, friendly, informal fashi...
