Mergers, marriages and after: how can training help ?

Abstract

There is a high failure rate among companies involved in cross‐national mergers and joint ventures. One of the major causes for these costly mistakes is a lack of adequate preparation of the personnel involved and a failure to provide training which fosters self‐awareness, cultural sensitivity and the spirit of co‐operation between foreign partners. Presents three models which are valuable for helping to analyse the problematic areas in cross‐cultural communication. Gives two case examples to show how the models have been applied in practice, involving French, Dutch, Swedish and UK companies.