ABSTRACT

The great psychological impact of mergers and acquisitions on the people involved has long been recognized. A loss of psychological attachment to the organization is often cited as one of the major psychological consequences of mergers (e.g., Buono, Bowditch, & Lewis, 1985; Cartwright & Cooper, 1992b; Dutton et al, 1994; Schweiger & Walsh, 1990; Schweiger & Weber, 1989). In this chapter, we focus on the social identity processes affecting postmerger organizational identification, to address among other things the why of this lowered attachment (see also Gaertner et al., Chapter 17 of this volume; Terry, Chapter 15 of this volume). We present a model of postmerger identification that highlights the intergroup dynamics that may affect identification in organizational mergers, and discuss empirical findings in support of the model. First, however, we briefly discuss the theoretical framework on which our analysis is based.