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The Role of Organizational Culture 257

coming together, the challenge is to create, intentionally, a new culture that refl ects
the most strategic aspects of the parent organizations. Cultural integration in a merger
situation is about understanding and melding what can be two very different “ shared
lives, ” and growing a new one in the process.
Those who are tasked with furthering cultural integration have to assess the issues
above for the premerger partners, and then address the questions below:
• What are the most compatible elements of our former organizations ’ cultures?
• What are the elements that suggest the greatest potential confl ict?
• What would we like the new organization ’ s culture to look like?
• What do we want to be certain to bring forward into the new culture?
• What will be some indicators of successful cultural integration in our new
organization?
Through a deliberate and inclusive process of considering and discussing these
issues, the new organization can build trust, camaraderie, and the beginnings of a new
culture that will develop and evolve over the new organization ’ s future. This can be
the most challenging and, in many ways, the most rewarding work of postmerger
integration.

Box 7.8
An example: Sigma

Sigma is a team-oriented completely virtual German organization ( Lemken, Kahler, and
Rittenbruch 2000 ). They went from twenty founding members to two-hundred employ-
ees with home offi ces throughout the country. They introduced a bulletin board service
and local groups met biweekly or bimonthly. All employees met face-to-face once a
year. Each area, each branch ended up having its own local culture. There was a great
deal of resistance to any top-down implementation of a KM system as well as to any
attempts to change their culture. In the early years, Sigma was a small group of indi-
viduals who had no trouble networking. Rapid growth and increasing virtualization
changed the early culture of Sigma. Technology could not replace their tradition of
personal-network-based collaboration and oral sharing of knowledge. However, what
did succeed was a highly fl exible approach. Transparency about activities resulted in
the creation of a culture of trust. KM is thus an evolutionary process that needs to
be embedded into the organizational culture. By allowing organizational members to
participate in the development of content, rules, and goals, greater cohesion will result
and this will help move the organization to a higher level of organizational and KM
maturity.