MBA 7300 Module 1 Diagnosing a Post-Merger Culture Clash Example

Two Cultures Under One Sign: Diagnosing a Post-Merger Equipment Dealer

Student Name

Master of Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

MBA-7300: Management Capstone

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Two Cultures Under One Sign: Diagnosing a Post-Merger Equipment Dealer

Purpose

This first assignment of the capstone consulting project analyzes the culture of Cascade Lift and Equipment, a composite dealer and service provider for forklifts and construction equipment with 640 employees across 11 branches in Oregon and Washington, and identifies the problem the project will address. Later assignments will review the research literature, analyze data and recommend actions. The diagnosis uses Schein and Schein's (2017) three levels of culture and Cameron and Quinn's (2011) competing values framework.

Background

Cascade, a process-driven company with 380 employees, acquired Ridgeline Equipment, a family-owned dealer with 260 employees and a 40-year history, in early 2024. The combined company adopted Cascade's name, systems and policies within six months. Leadership expected savings from shared purchasing and a larger service network. Eighteen months later, several measures point to trouble in the former Ridgeline branches.

The former Cascade branches show stable figures over the same period, which suggests the problem is not general labor market conditions but something specific to the integration.

Diagnosis: Schein's Three Levels

Schein and Schein (2017) ask the analyst to dig past what Cascade displays, its forms and approval software, and past what its executives say they believe, to the unspoken convictions about trust that actually steer how branch staff behave.

At the artifact level, the differences are clear. Ridgeline branch managers could approve repair quotes up to $15,000 on the spot, technicians kept their own trucks and tool inventories, and the owners knew most customers by name. Cascade replaced these with a regional approval workflow for quotes over $2,500, a pooled truck fleet and a central customer service desk. At the level of espoused values, both companies claim to value customer service and safety, so the official statements offer little to separate them. The real difference lies in basic assumptions. Ridgeline assumed that skilled people close to the customer should be trusted to decide; Cascade assumes that standard processes and controls produce reliable results. Interviews with technicians repeatedly describe the new approval rules as a sign of distrust.

Diagnosis: The Competing Values Framework

Cameron and Quinn (2011) plot culture on two axes, one running from discretion to control and the other from an inward to an outward orientation, which yields four types: a clan that runs on cooperation and loyalty, an adhocracy that runs on experiment, a market that runs on winning and targets, and a hierarchy that runs on rules and steady procedure. A preliminary reading of interviews and documents places Ridgeline's culture strongly in the clan quadrant and Cascade's in the hierarchy and market quadrants. The integration imposed hierarchy practices on a clan workforce without addressing the shift in assumptions. Hartnell et al. (2011) pooled studies built on the four culture types and found that clan cultures went with happier, more committed staff while market cultures went with stronger financial results, so each side of Cascade's merger brought an advantage the combined company could squander.

Problem Identification

The symptoms are turnover, slower decisions, lower satisfaction and lower productivity. The underlying problem, stated for the consulting project, is this: the integration replaced the acquired branches' decentralized, trust-based way of working with centralized controls, creating a clash of basic assumptions that is driving technicians to leave and slowing service. The project will ask how Cascade can retain the control and efficiency benefits of its systems while restoring enough local decision authority and recognition to keep experienced technicians and service quality. That question is specific, consequential, and answerable with literature and data.

Scope and Next Steps

The project will focus on the five former Ridgeline branches and their 74 service technicians and 9 branch and service managers, comparing them with the six legacy Cascade branches. The literature review in Module 2 will examine research on cultural integration after acquisitions and on person-organization fit and turnover. Module 3 will analyze a culture survey, turnover records and interviews, and Module 4 will recommend changes and an implementation plan.

Stakeholder Views

Preliminary conversations show how differently stakeholders see the situation. Senior leaders describe the integration as largely complete and point to savings in purchasing and a single parts system. Former Ridgeline branch managers describe a loss of authority and say they now spend hours each week routing approvals they once decided themselves. Technicians speak of being treated as interchangeable, citing the pooled trucks and the loss of personal relationships with customers. Customers in the former Ridgeline territory mention longer waits for quotes and new faces on service calls. These views are not contradictory; each group is describing a different part of the same change, which is why a culture diagnosis is needed rather than a fix for a single process.

Alternative Explanations

Before settling on culture as the cause, other explanations deserve a check. Pay could explain technician departures, but Cascade raised technician wages to its own higher scale at the acquisition, so the former Ridgeline technicians are paid more than before. A regional labor shortage could explain turnover, but the legacy Cascade branches in the same labor markets did not see the same increase. Workload could explain lower productivity, but service order volume in the former Ridgeline branches is roughly flat. The evidence therefore points toward the integration itself, and specifically to the change in how work is controlled, as the most likely cause, which the data analysis in Module 3 will test.

Conclusion

Cascade's merger combined two cultures with opposite assumptions about control and trust. The resulting clash, visible in turnover, approval times and customer satisfaction, is the problem the capstone will address.

References

Cameron, K. S., & Quinn, R. E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Hartnell, C. A., Ou, A. Y., & Kinicki, A. (2011). Organizational culture and organizational effectiveness: A meta-analytic investigation of the competing values framework's theoretical suppositions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(4), 677-694. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021987

Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. A. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed.). Wiley.