Businees organisation and policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Businees organisation and policy - Essay Example Furthermore, Board members believe that acquisitions or mergers will have long-run benefits for improving innovation or expanding product line to ensure higher revenues and thereby make the company more attractive to investors through bond issuance or stock purchasing. Despite this rationale, there are several different factors that lead to failures in merger and acquisition failures: cultural integration problems, direct management failures in execution and leadership, the current position of either company as it relates to product/service life cycle and the speed by which changes are made within the new blended organisation. This report gives perspective on these failures and potential successes to justify why Board members continue to pursue this strategy, using real-world case studies as reference for analysis. 2. Failed merger: Hewlett Packard and Compaq Both Hewlett Packard and Compaq believed a blended company would achieve synergies in relation to cost, research and developme nt, innovation and time to market, as well as consolidation of service and technical support which were significant expenditures as self-operated firms. Compaq had a well-established brand, however complexities in the consumer market, along with emerging competition offering similar services and products, continued to erode brand loyalty and sales revenues. At the time of the merger, Compaq experienced a net income of only $78 million, a decline from 2000 of $296 million (Compaq 2001). This was significantly low considering Compaq sustained revenues of 1.1 billion dollars in 2001. Compaq maintained significantly high operating expenses and credit/loan repayments that continued to erode cash flow and shareholder equity. HP, on the other hand, maintained a much stronger balance sheet and sustained a healthier brand loyalty in consumer markets and thus intended to strengthen the positioning of Compaq and consolidate its over-financed operations to ensure synergistic outcomes. However, executives at HP failed to consider that both Compaq and Hewlett-Packard were in the maturity stage of the service and product life cycle and would both be moving toward sales declines without innovative service and product launches. At the time of merger, Hewlett Packard was having a significantly difficult time competing with the B2B market alongside competition such as IBM and Sun in relation to server product purchases to sustain business information technology infrastructures (Hoopes 2004). This was a very profitable market for competition and for HP if they managed to position themselves properly on the B2B market. Investors found that the inability to gain target market business customers would only be further sustained by blending Compaq’s already troubled brand into its corporate sales and marketing strategies. HP and Compaq were already both experiencing the maximum profit expected without modernising services in the maturity stage and, at the time, neither company were working on significantly differentiated product developments to expand revenues and avoid eventual sales declines. Hewlett Packard also maintained a very rigid, top-down hierarchy that was highly centralized whilst Compaq had a more liberal system of governance that fostered more innovation and free