| The literature states that as many as 75% of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) fail to produce their intended financial results because people do an inadequate job of engaging employees and integrating the cultures of the merging organizations. In this dissertation, the appreciative inquiry (AI) summit process (Ludema, Whitney, Mohr, & Griffin, 2003) was used to integrate the cultures of two merging banks. The AI summit is an approach to organizational change based on appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987; Barrett & Fry, 2005) that distinguishes itself by focusing on and leveraging individual and organizational strengths. The results of this study show that the AI summit process had a positive impact on employee engagement and culture integration by (1) creating a sense of empowerment across the divide of the merging organizations, (2) honoring and combining cultural elements of each of the organizations, (3) unifying the organizations around a common vision and set of priorities, and (4) shifting the prevailing dialogue in the combined organization from predominantly negative to predominantly positive. Implications for research and practice are discussed. |
