ABSTRACT
In the literature, national culture is a central concept in the field of international business. This chapter attempts to enrich the literature, which has demonstrated the importance of cultural differences in hierarchical relationships and to provide a new perspective of authority figures based on ethnographic approach. It outlines the extant literature on cultural difficulties during the post-acquisition integration phase. The chapter presents the methodology deployed and the case study and details the main results relating to the authority figures, both in the subsidiary and in the acquiring company, and the way they are embedded into their cultural contexts. The empirical investigation performed by Slangen shows that a high level of post-acquisition integration is likely to reduce the performance of the international acquisition. The chapter describes the main features of this authority figure by recalling some scenes from the daily life of the company before contextualizing and explaining them in the Egyptian shared meanings.
