HI,
"Introduction 10th January 2000 was a historical day in media world when AOL planned to acquire Times Warner for around 182 billion in stock and debt . It was a marriage of old-and new media-titans It is one of the largest deals in corporate history of USA , and this combines the USA ‘s top internet service provider with the world ‘s top media conglomerate . The new company was worth 350 billion and represents an unprecedented media powerhouse . The other side of the story is it is even the merger of two very different corporate cultures and methodologies .AOL Culture versus Times Warner Culture There are significant difference in culture of AOL and Time Warner . The major reason for a cultural difference is the generation gap among the people working in both the organization. AOL has young employees while Times Warner has employee‘s can act as fatherly figure to AOL employees. The cultural differences broaden as AOL take over Times Warner and the reporting authority changes".
I think organization culture differences between the two organization was huge and that's why there was a culture crash because of the gender differences and also difference in the style of culture......The two cultures clashed with the Time Warner employees thinking that the AOL employees are aggressive and the AOL employees thinking that the Time Warner people are lazy it is actually the way each organization perceive the things.
Secondly in order for the merger to work Time Warner will have to change their Decentralized style of organization structure to a Management one because AOL uses the Centralized way of doing the things and on its own it did not had much problem working under one roof, But before the merger, it was a relatively small company focused mostly on Internet access. Now it has more diversity in its business with Time Warner in is picture. The last major change in AOL’s operations was the shift to flat pricing, and the company fumbled it miserably with widespread service outages as the company couldn’t keep up the increased demand for its service. This time, the stakes are much higher.
Third Ahead of the merger the companies announced their new chief talent scout Michelle James she works with AOL Time Warner to identify top talent both internally and externally , in my opinion her leadership traits and styles has proven her to effective in her work like openness and extra-version she was at times Directive in her style but also Supportive to people she recruit , Her charisma shows that she is a Transformational Leader as one of the executive of AOL once said that “Michele has made outstanding contributions to our company as AOL’s chief talent scout, and we are very excited that her energy, resources and experience are now available globally. With Michele at the helm, we are confident that AOL Time Warner will continue to attract and develop the world’s best talent and be a magnet for a broad range of people and perspective.
This Merger had both the negative and positive impacts but positive was more than the negatives, like there was a culture difference between the organizations but after appointing Michelle these differences were slowly becoming negligible because she knew her roles and responsibilities.
This Merger had both the negative and positive impacts but positive was more than the negatives, like there was a culture difference between the organizations but after appointing Michelle these differences were slowly becoming negligible because she knew her roles and responsibilities.
What do you think about the Merger and also about Michelle roles and responsibilities with respect to organization behavior?
AYUSHI SHARMA
References
I agree she was a transformational leader. She took charge when there was major changes going on with in both companies. It is interesting they both judged the other company before the merger. I am interested in the communication between companies. What medium was used? And if there is a feedback portion. The company has been successful since the merger. I wonder how much has had to be changed and moved around. I would think the hardest part would be going from a decentralized managment to a centralized management. As an employee that would be a rough change. Dena Wibben
ReplyDeleteAfter this two company are emerge, I think that the most interesting thing is how this two company communicate with each other? As Ayushi said, this two company have different culture. How would Aol and Time Warner communicate since one is a younger company which has many creative employees, while the other one is an older company which has conservative employees. They have different goal commitment and different culture background, for the leader, its a big challenge to the new company. After the emerge, I think leader should use directive leadership to guild their employees because the employees do not know what should they do after emerging, they feel role ambiguity. Employees need a leader who can give them directive to finish their job.
ReplyDeleteHI
ReplyDeleteI found a new story after i analyzed this case that is the merger ended after 10 years due to some organizational discomfort between the two companies which would interest you guyz a little bit as it did to me that why and what happened that the biggest merger came to an end???
They were actually quiet ineffective in a way they manage their employees AOL and Time Warner failed to implement their visions and communicate them – e.g. marketing Time Warner content through all channels possible. Additionally, they even lacked the ability to recognize new trends in the digital industry.