Resistance in a career perspective

If you wish to apply a perspective truly based on the individual, you need to see the organization as part of the individual’s professional life, rather than the individual as part of the organization’s life, claim Larsson, Driver, Holmqvist and Sweet (2001). Schein (1978) advocates a similar approach, saying career must be seen as part of the individual’s total life. In the middle of the 20th century, March and Simon (1958) presented their inducement-contribution theory, saying that every employment must be seen as a balance between individual and organization, in the way that the organization’s incentives are at least

equal to the individual’s contribution. If this balance is disturbed, it will inevitably affect their participation and performance, they said.

This line of thought has continued over the years. Appelbaum and Leblanc (1998) claim that matching organizational needs and the individual’s needs in M&A, will contribute to minimizing resistance.

According to Schein (1978), the dominant profession in the organization matters for culture and management style. Especially, cultural values are very much influenced by the experience and personality of key employees. Schein (1978:11) writes:

one might expect to find characteristic differences among companies that are dominated by financial people, lawyers, engineers, salespeople, or other occupational groups. Such differences, if and when they are found, are usually the key to the managerial style and assumptions operating in the organization.

Gouldner (1958, 1959, both according to Löwendahl, 1997) says that some employees can feel greater loyalty to their professional group than to their employer. He calls these people cosmopolitans. They are contrasted by locals - individuals who continue placing their main loyalty with the employer. While cosmopolitans are mobile internally as well as externally, locals are more focused on the internal situation in the organization. Cosmopolitans become increasingly common in organizations, says Löwendahl (1997). This flexibility is sometimes described (e.g. Brousseau et al, 1996; Mintzberg, 1993) as key for future success. Brousseau, Driver, Eneroth and Larsson (1996) point out that this flexibility must increase both in terms of physical mobility and in terms of ways of thinking.

In M&A, it is mainly employees with expert or linear profiles who are made redundant or choose to leave for other reasons, according to Larsson, Driver, Holmqvist, and Sweet (2001), who say this means that the organization runs a risk of losing leadership competence and knowledge. The expert and linear career profiles are two out of four types of careers in a model that was developed during the 1970s and 1980s by Michael J. Driver and Kenneth R. Brousseau (Brousseau et al, 1996). The other two career profiles are called spiral and transitory.

Here, the individual’s career profile is determined according to how often the individual changes employment or professional area, the

direction in his or her career movements and also career motives and incentives. The number of academic publications on this model demonstrates that it can be considered one of the leading career models in the world. (Brousseau, Driver, Eneroth & Larsson, 1996.)

Exits (in any form) are commonplace in M&A and a considerable amount of research (e.g. Gaertner, 1986; Hirsch, 1987; Larsson, 1990) has showed that M&As indeed tend to have negative effects on most employees’ careers. The consequences for a career are normally one or more of the following: (i) dismissals and resignations, (ii) increased insecurity and fewer possibilities to advance for those who stay, and (iii) interrupted career planning (Larsson & Driver, 1993).

A study by Haspeslough and Jemison (1991) found that two of the four issues that worried personnel the most were related to their own career.

The other two issues concerned whether or not the company president would remain and if operations would continue as before. Despite of this, personnel issues are often given low priority in M&As, says Holbeche (1998). He claims that one of the reasons for this is that senior managers feel threatened and therefore focus on protecting themselves and their careers, before focusing on other employees. The distribution of positions in the new organization is based on a new power balance and thus this constitutes high symbolic value. If personnel feel that they are not part of the winning team, they will react negatively, Holbeche (1998) argues. Cartwright and Cooper (1996), too, emphasize the importance of creating a win/win atmosphere in a merger and avoid competition. According to Larsson (1990), personnel support in M&As will decrease, as employment security and outlooks for rewards and promotion do the same.

However, findings by Covin et al (1996:139) indicate that only career expectations are not enough to prevent resistance;

Findings from this study indicate that acquired firm employees experienced high levels of dissatisfaction with the merger despite of relatively high career future expectations with the acquiring firm.

The authors speculate that personnel may have given priority to the long-term growth or survival of the whole organization, in order to ensure their continued employment.

Large scale dismissals are common in M&As. Apart from this, we do not know much about careers in M&A, from a personnel perspective, since this area has not been given much attention in M&A theory. Is there, for example, a connection between the employee’s wish to remain throughout the merger, and the choice of new organization schema? How much does it matter who is given key positions in the new organization? With a personnel perspective Hirsch (1987) concludes that the employee primarily should be loyal to him- or herself in a merger, and to preserve health and career the most rational action for the individual might be to leave.

Bligh and Carsten (2005) and Millward and Kyriakidou (2003) suggest that personnel and management share a psychological contract in M&A. The notion of this psychological contract is closely related to career. Herriot and Pemberton (1996:757) write:

These contracts are based both on a perceived match between one’s own wants and what the other has to offer, and on the exchange of promised offers. […] Responses to the contract by each party are based on their perceptions of its equity and of whether it has been honoured.

The psychological contract is a moral theory on a reciprocal obligation, based on implicit or explicit promises, between employer and employee (Rousseau, 1995). Based on promises from management, members of the organization raise expectations that are mainly governed by the psychological contract between employer and employee (Bligh &

Carsten, 2005). It originates already in the interview preceding an employment (Dunahee & Wangler, 1974), and is closely connected with expectations. The importance of understanding expectations, when attempting to explain personnel resistance in M&A, has been emphasized by, for example, Frommer (2001) and Hubbard and Purcell (2001).

When referring to the relational type of psychological contract, as opposed to the more short-term type called transactional (Rousseau, 1995), the equivalence in moral philosophy of the psychological contract is the social contract. While the psychological contract is applied mainly on individual or inter-individual level, in the relationship employer-employee, social contract theory is applied on collective level, looking at society as a whole. In social contract theory,

the interests of each individual are equally important, and its aim is to make society function as smoothly as possible. Thus, a prerequisite for this contract is that everyone joins it and undertakes to follow the same rules. (Rachels, 2003.) The logic in an organization is similar.

According to Rawls’ (1999) “theory of justice”, a type of social contract theory, no citizen in a society should be violated in terms of justice and his or her liberty should never be restricted for the benefits of other citizens.

Social identity is also an important theme, when trying to understand career (Millward & Kyriakidou, 2003). If previous career investments in an organization are abused or betrayed, the employee may not be as willing to invest in the new organization (Herriot, 2001). It has been found that maintaining identity from pre- to post-merger is critical for personnel to adjust successfully (van Knippenberg et al, 2002).

Millward and Kyriakidou (2003) argue that the key to bridging pre-merger and post-pre-merger identities is located in the concept of career.

Career is closely connected to identity, as it helps the employee define her- or himself in the context of the workplace. However, career is not only about identity or definition of self, but it also aims at expressing and protecting this self to provide continuity, coherence, and esteem. It is when thwarting this self-protective function that resistances can arise.

(Breakwell, according to Millward & Kyriakidou, 2003.)

In this section, the three levels of resistance in M&A theory have been discussed. We now turn to Change Management and Labour Process Theory, to see how resistance is understood in these theoretical fields.