Merger and acquisition activities have become an integral part of todays business world. They
are considered as strategic component to gain market shares and extend product portfolios.
Still these transactions have a huge impact on an organization. This paper looks specifically
at the M&A impact on company culture. Based on an analysis of identified key elements which
drive a M&A process a cultural integration toolkit will be developed to solve identified
cultural problems. Secondary data serves as source data for an inductive approach. Cultural
problems and key drivers will be identified based on systematic research. The implantation of
these key drivers in existing integration models will be further studied. Findings prove that
not all of the identified key drivers are implemented in the models. Therefore existing models
solve the identified cultural problems semi-efficient. This leaves the need for a basic
integration tool which implements all key drivers serves as guideline through an M&A process
and provides specific instruments for realization of single steps. This paper develops such a
basic integration toolkit in chapter five. The toolkit meets all these requirements and proves
that managing culture clashes in M&As is possible.
