‘Business as usual?’ Retail employee perceptions of organizational life following cross-border acquisition

Abstract

The question of whether strong organizational cultures can be exported across borders has been continually debated in the management and business literature. With increased retail internationalization, the question arises in how far global retailers will be able to transpose their cultural values – which are regarded as key levers to business success – into other national contexts. A case study of the acquisition of a UK retailer reveals workforce compliance to behavioural norms and consent to company values at Schein's (2004) second tier of organizational culture. However, the cultural integration espoused in the retailer's literature is not achieved, but differentiation and fragmentation (Martin, 1992, 2002) prevail at store level, despite the probable existence of a strong sectoral culture (Ogbonna and Harris, 2002).

Keywords:

• Cross-border acquisition
• employee relations
• international retailing
• organizational culture management
• sectoral culture

Acknowledgements

The pilot study for this paper was commissioned as part of a collaborative research project funded by The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The ensuing further research is part of a wider project on Retail Globalization conducted jointly by Queen's University in Kingston, Canada; Heriot-Watt University, Scotland; Manchester Metropolitan University, England; and Universitaet Wuerzburg, Germany.

The author wishes to thank Paul Brook, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School for his contribution to the primary data collection and work on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1 Many of the arguments have been influenced or are based on Hofstede's (1991) research on culture. However, as these debates deal more with culture at national or regional level, this line of argument will not be pursued here.

2 In order to maintain anonymity of the organization, specific details on its international ventures, market position, number of outlets and employees have been omitted.

3 The researcher would like to thank the organization for its co-operation. Special thanks go to all respondents, who gave freely of their time and opinions.

4 To protect the anonymity of the organization, more detailed information of the respondent groups cannot be provided.

5 In order to ensure respondents' anonymity, individual contributions are not identified.

6 The term colleague will be used throughout when referring to company literature and respondents.

7 While the issue of continuing trade union presence in SupershopPlus constitutes an interesting and important part in future culture management initiatives, there is not sufficient space here to follow this argument.