Strategic Decision Making in a Global Business Setting - Case Study Example

The best option for the company is to utilize an acquisition of AMI. The reason that a merger would not be the best option is because the corporate cultures of the two companies are too different. It would take a lot of time and resources to incorporate both cultures. The reason UCTC wants to acquire AMI is for strategic purposes. The firm was already buying most of its metal fabrications from AMI. By buying AMI in an acquisition transaction UCTC would lower its operations costs and it would increase its income.

The acquisition option can be implemented immediately since it would not affect the internal operations of UCTC. 2. A cultural audit is needed to evaluate these two firms. The audit would evaluate the demographics of the population, education, and experience of the staff. The demographic variables to be judged are age, gender, language and ethnic background. The AMI operation seems to have a deficiency in terms of balance of gender. Only 15% of the worker populations are women. Such an imbalance in gender composition is not healthy and could be used as evidence against the firm if the company ever got into litigation with female workers.

AMI also suffer from glass ceiling symptoms since not enough women are part of the managerial staff. The cultural audit performed at UCTC demonstrated that the firm has great diversity within its staff. A good initiative for this firm would be to create seminars and trainings to discuss the importance of diversity and how it can be used as a competitive advantage in the business industry. 3. Due to the differences in culture between the two firms my consulting firm could serve as a valuable intermediary that can create a plan to achieve synergy among the two business entities in the long run.

The organizational culture affects the ability of the change agent to incorporate changes (Recklies, 2011). My first action would be to meet with the managerial staff of each company independently. After the two meetings I would have a third meeting with both managerial staffs present. In this meeting we would discuss the immediate actions that can be taken to integrate both staff. A good idea would be to have a welcoming party to celebrate the integration of both companies. 4. After the initial welcoming party in which both staffs met for the first time the following steps require human resource intervention.

The HR staff has to hire more minorities and women within the next month to create better diversity. A woman on staff will be given a promotion to become a supervisor. Two employees one from AMI and one from UCTC will be selected to study each others’ organization. Each employee will receive a one week tour of the facilities and operations. After a week the employee will go back to his company and report their findings to the workers. The idea is for all employees to learn about each other operations.

A worker exchange program will be created that will allow the two companies to interchange workers for a predetermined period of time. References Rechlies, D. (2001). What Makes a Good Change Agent? Retrieved April 29, 2011 from http://www.themanager.org/Strategy/change_agent.htm