The story being told is Walmart’s acquisition of an Indian e-commerce company, Flipkart. Walmart wanted a 77 percent stake in Flipkart and was ready to pay 16 billion U.S. dollars for a company valued at 20 billion dollars. The complex aspects of the acquisition included tough regulatory restrictions imposed on foreign investments in India and showstoppers, such as human resource issues.
One of the issues in the given case was leadership after the Walmart-Flipkart merger. The co-founder of Flipkart had exited the deal over leadership differences with Walmart. Other leadership concerns also included the CEO whose exit from the deal could affect employee morale. Another significant issue during the merger was related to human resource management. HR would have experience problems managing culture clashes between the two distinct organizations. The deal was bound to be faced with entrepreneurial culture clashes based on innovation, flexibility, and agility.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The issue of leadership arose where the management of the two organizations could not agree on certain aspects of the merger. Given Walmart was the bigger company acquiring Flipkart. Naturally, the leadership of Flipkart would feel undermined; as such, the then-current CEO felt compelled to leave the merger. The problems with HR had to be expected, as is the situation between different cultures. The American corporate culture would want to influence the Indian corporate culture, which would either want to retain their business culture or also influence the Americans. Discord and creative differences would bring HR problems.
If I were involved in the given situation, I would form a merger and acquisition team that would aid both sides in the change process, retain, and motivate key employees. I would form this team because it would be sensitive to cultural differences and help the employees accept each other’s culture reducing conflict. The team would also help management agree on leadership.
