PSYCH 629 Week 6 Organization Development and Change Example

Merging Two Installer Crews After an Acquisition: An Organization Development Plan Built on Change Research

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSYCH/629: Introduction to Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Week 6 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The two companies, their crews and the integration plan are composites written for a model paper; research findings come from the sources listed.

Organization development applies behavioral science to planned change, with an emphasis on participation and data. Mergers and acquisitions test those principles hard. This final paper plans the integration of a company my employer has just acquired.

The Situation

Sunridge Solar, based near Henderson, Nevada, with 140 employees, has bought Copper Mesa Solar, a twenty-five-person installer in Kingman, Arizona, to expand into northwestern Arizona. Copper Mesa was founded by a husband and wife who will retire after the sale. Its five crews have worked together for years, set their own schedules and call the founders by their first names. Sunridge runs on standard procedures, time standards, the new four-dimension rating form and structured safety checks. The owner expects Copper Mesa's crews to adopt Sunridge's systems within a month and has said the merger "will take care of itself."

Diagnosis

Following the OD principle of diagnosing before acting, I interviewed fifteen Copper Mesa employees and eight Sunridge foremen and reviewed pay and safety records. Several issues emerged. Copper Mesa installers fear losing pay, since their hourly rates are on average two dollars lower than Sunridge's but they receive a year-end bonus that Sunridge does not offer. They fear job losses, as rumors suggest that Sunridge will send its own crews to Kingman. They value their informal culture and worry that "Las Vegas rules" will replace their way of working. Sunridge foremen, for their part, worry that Copper Mesa crews skip safety checks; records show Copper Mesa had two recordable falls in three years, compared with none at Sunridge.

A Classic Model of Change

Lewin (1947) pictured a group's habits as a balance point held in place by forces pushing in opposite directions. To change the habit for good, that balance must first be loosened, then shifted, then fixed again at the new point. Lewin emphasized that group decisions, in which people discuss and commit together, produce more lasting change than individual instruction. For the merger, unfreezing means helping Copper Mesa employees see why change is necessary and safe; moving means joint work to build new practices; refreezing means embedding them in pay, procedures and leadership.

What Change Research Shows

Armenakis and Bedeian (1999) reviewed a decade of organizational change research and organized it into four themes: content, what is being changed; context, the internal and external conditions surrounding the change; process, how change is implemented; and criterion issues, how outcomes are assessed. They noted that process issues, such as communication and participation, strongly affect whether change succeeds, and that readiness for change can be built through clear messages about why change is needed and what it will mean.

Applying their framework, the content includes pay, schedules, safety procedures and reporting lines; the context includes a tight labor market for skilled installers and the founders' departure; the process has so far consisted of an email and rumors; and criteria have not been defined.

Copper Mesa's installers were not resisting Sunridge's procedures; they were asking whether they still had a job.

Reactions on the Receiving End

Oreg et al. (2011) gathered six decades of survey and experimental studies about how employees respond when change is done to them. They found that reactions depended on recipients' characteristics, such as their disposition toward change, but more strongly on features of the change and how it was managed: perceived benefit or harm, the quality of communication, participation in decisions, trust in management and support. Positive reactions were associated with commitment and performance; negative reactions with stress and turnover intentions.

This review suggests that Copper Mesa's anxiety is a predictable response to uncertainty and lack of information, not an inherent resistance to change. It also suggests that the owner's month-long timeline with no communication would produce the negative reactions most associated with turnover.

The Human Side of Acquisitions

Seo and Hill (2005) proposed an integrative framework for understanding employees' experiences of mergers and acquisitions, drawing on theories of anxiety, social identity, acculturation, role conflict, job characteristics and organizational justice. They argued that each theory explains different problems, such as uncertainty about jobs, loss of group identity, culture clash and perceptions of unfair treatment, and that these problems arise at different stages of integration. Managers should address the specific problem dominant at each stage.

At this stage, anxiety and job uncertainty dominate. Identity and culture will matter as integration proceeds, and justice concerns will peak when pay and roles are aligned.

The Integration Plan

The plan follows an action research cycle of data, feedback, action and evaluation. In the first two weeks, the owner will visit Kingman, meet all Copper Mesa employees in person and announce three commitments: no layoffs for at least one year, no pay cuts and Copper Mesa's crews will continue to serve the Kingman area. Answers to frequent questions will be posted in writing.

In the first two months, a joint integration team of two Copper Mesa installers, two Sunridge foremen, a Copper Mesa office manager and me will review differences in procedures and recommend which to adopt. Copper Mesa practices that work well, such as its crew-led scheduling, will be considered for Sunridge too. Safety procedures will be aligned first, with joint training on the practice roof.

Pay will be aligned over six months: Copper Mesa installers move to Sunridge's hourly rates, with a transition payment equal to their average year-end bonus in the first year.

Leadership will be addressed by naming a respected Copper Mesa lead installer as the Kingman operations manager.

Culture as Something to Combine, Not Replace

Copper Mesa's culture has strengths the larger company lacks. Its crews know each other's habits, cover for one another when a child is sick and solve scheduling problems among themselves without a dispatcher. Sunridge's culture has strengths too: consistent procedures, better safety records and clear performance measures. A plan that simply imposes one culture on the other would lose something valuable and confirm Copper Mesa's fear of being swallowed. The integration team will therefore ask a direct question for each practice: which version serves customers, safety and employees best? Where Copper Mesa's way wins, Sunridge will adopt it, and the decision will be announced as such, so that both groups see that the merger runs in two directions.

Feedback Loops

Action research depends on returning data to the people who supplied it. After each climate survey, results will be shared with both locations in plain summaries, along with the actions the integration team plans in response. Employees will be invited to comment on those plans before they are carried out.

Evaluation

We will track voluntary turnover at both locations, safety violations, install productivity and a short climate survey on trust, fairness and identification with the combined company at two, six and twelve months.

Risks

Commitments must be kept; breaking the no-layoff promise would destroy trust. Sunridge employees may resent Copper Mesa practices being adopted, which the joint team must manage openly.

Conclusion

The acquisition will not take care of itself. Diagnosis shows legitimate concerns about pay, jobs, culture and safety. Lewin's model, change research and frameworks for mergers point to early honest communication, participation through a joint team, fair pay alignment and attention to identity, evaluated over a year.

References

Armenakis, A. A., & Bedeian, A. G. (1999). Organizational change: A review of theory and research in the 1990s. Journal of Management, 25(3), 293-315. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639902500303

Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in group dynamics: Concept, method and reality in social science; social equilibria and social change. Human Relations, 1(1), 5-41. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872674700100103

Oreg, S., Vakola, M., & Armenakis, A. (2011). Change recipients' reactions to organizational change: A 60-year review of quantitative studies. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47(4), 461-524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886310396550

Seo, M.-G., & Hill, N. S. (2005). Understanding the human side of merger and acquisition: An integrative framework. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 41(4), 422-443. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886305281902