Mergers and Acquisitions have become more and more in common knower days among the companies. Factors that might influence could be such as power of competition or it could even be the aim of new strategies of the company. In mergers is it not only the buildings and the physical objects that is put together, also the human beings within the organization are put together. Each person contributes to the culture, which makes the situation more complicated. In making a merger successful, it is important to pay attention to the organizational culture. The definition Organizational culture is very complex and difficult to interpretative. There are many definitions of the organizational culture, a common definition is; “the understanding of reality, values and rules that is valid within a given group”. 1
Since the idea of culture is becoming more known and important within the mergers, in making them successful, we find it interesting to investigate how the organizational culture is influenced by the mergers. The purpose is to find out how the organizational culture from two organizations will influence the merger organization. As starting point have we chosen Edgar Schein’s definition of organizational culture and his three levels of culture in our studie. We will study the neuralgia clinic at Karolinska university hospital in Stockholm. The fact that the clinic is placed in two different geographical places makes the culture studies interesting.
We found that it was interesting that two cultures were existing side by side in the same organization. We think that a fundamental reason is that the clinic is based on two different geographical places. In Solna they have a more conservative culture and in Huddinge the culture is more entrepreneurial.
1 Bang H 1994 s. 21