ABSTRACT
Mergers, takeovers, alliances and privatisations In real life mergers rarely happen; whenever one company joins up with another, one of them almost always comes out on top. In this situation it is vital to bury past animosities and make a new beginning with an entirely new behavioural pattern, name and visual identity. Here the behavioural and visual manifestations of the identity process have to work together in creating and managing change, so that when the new organisation emerges employees no longer continually evoke the past or refer to their colleagues from a different background as members of the rival gang, but operate so far as this is possi ble given the constraints of human nature, in a positive fashion. Hence the long recognised need for the identity discipline in mergers.
