När flera blir en – En studie i hur medarbetare upplever och påverkas av kommunikativa insatser vid implementeringen av en ny organisationskultur

Sammanfattning: Mergers between organisations is a commonly occurring phenomena in the business world of the 21th century, due to a pursuit of becoming more cost-effective and competitive on a national or international market. This bachelor thesis aims to investigate how employees experience communication strategies and which impact they may have on attitudes when an organisation has been merged, and if it is possible to successfully implement a mutual culture within a new organisation by using strategic communication as a tool. The study wishes to contribute with new perspectives on mergers between organisations by solely focusing on the viewpoints of the employees, considering earlier studies within the field have had a predominant management perspective. In this study we have focused on three companies within the food industry which were acquired by Orkla Foods Sverige during 2013–2014. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with nine employees from the different organisations, which have been analysed through a thematic analysis method. The result of this study shows that the communication strategies, which were carried out by the management in the organisation, to some extent did affect the employees’ attitudes in a desirable way during the organisational change process. However, these strategies were not the key to successfully shaping the organisational culture within Orkla Foods Sverige. According to the employees who took part in this study, factors beyond communication efforts was of great significance when the merging took place.