Culture Trumps Strategy: Mergers in Higher Education and Beyond

Cultural differences often doom mergers, even in higher education. Despite strategic vision, institutional culture 'eats strategy for breakfast.' Success requires proactively understanding and integrating diverse cultures, fostering new values while preserving old ones, for a stronger future.

The success of mergers in sectors aside from college may rest as a lot, or perhaps much more, on society as it does on approach. A huge share of mergers are not effective, with cultural differences typically indicated as a factor. In much of those industries, staff members’ social fit or misalignment is most likely to straight and rapidly effect the organization’s bottom line.

Culture’s Primacy in Mergers

I was lately talking with an university leader that had courageously aided lead an institutional merger, all while knowing that he was intentionally working himself out of a task. The leader concerned advised me that he found truth in an oft-repeated service saying: “Culture eats method for breakfast.”

Dispelling the Myth of Unmixable Cultures

No, as the mixes of the Georgia Health Sciences College and Augusta State University, Mills College and Northeastern College, Delaware State College and Wesley College, and several others show, mergers of very different organizations can be effective. The success of a merger critically depends on the strategic vision and function behind the combination.

Thus, it is not real that you can not mix societies in higher education, either via the interior advancement of various disciplines– as an example, by developing a medical, dental, or regulation college– or with a merger. A lot of institutions already have, welcome and manage heterogeneous university societies.

Thanks for joining!
Please watch out for a verification e-mail from
[email secured] To ensure we make it into your inbox on a regular basis,
add us to your permit checklist, note us as a risk-free sender, or include us to your address book.
Look into much more from

Defining Institutional Culture

In a 2025 publication I coauthored with three other higher education professionals, we kept in mind that the leaders of mergers, closures and other major institutional restructuring “will certainly do well to keep in mind that ‘exactly how’ and ‘what’ one ‘sees’ is culturally identified. Teams may not just ‘view’, yet really ‘see’ points in different ways.”

In other words, institutional culture is defined by the beliefs and perspectives of the individuals making up the institution. Change the people comprising the organization, transform the society– a well-tested, yet very disruptive, strategy in change monitoring.

“Put in a different way, only when the people at colleges encounter a brand-new set of values and ideas, as is most drastically apparent in a merger of institutions, can we observe what their future or existing society really talks to. The success of mergers in sectors various other than higher education may relax as a lot, or even much more, on culture as it does on technique. A large share of mergings are not successful, with cultural distinctions commonly pointed to as a reason.

Lessons from Successful Mergers

Ricardo Azziz has held many exec positions in college and led the merger that caused Georgia Regents University, now Augusta University. He is primary at Strategic Partnerships in Higher Education, or SPH, Consulting Group.

That’s partly due to the fact that I am the item of two academics– one a nuclear physicist and the other a social anthropologist– that typically operated in the exact same university yet whose academic methods and personalities might not be a lot more distinct. Additionally, I led the merging of a wellness scientific researches university with a liberal arts college– 2 establishments with long, deep backgrounds and extraordinarily different societies. In the 13-plus years since that merging, the college has actually had consistent enrollment growth and has increased its research study funding.

Navigating Cultural Discordance

In the merger of institution of higher learnings, cultural discordance will absolutely wreck your morning meal otherwise taken right into mindful, proactive and purposeful factor to consider. Yet it does not defeat a well-thought-through strategy, which ought to currently take into account social harshness on its method to taking the institution to a much better, more powerful and extra future-oriented location.

Tierney and Lanford created that “institutional society in higher education is perhaps most noticeable when individuals move to a brand-new university atmosphere after investing a substantial quantity of time at a solitary college or college.” Put differently, just when the individuals at colleges deal with a new collection of ideas and values, as is most dramatically evident in a merger of institutions, can we observe what their future or present society really talks to. We can best and many properly specify the details of an university’s culture when we juxtapose it to another establishment’s functions.

Embracing Diversity Within Institutions

The trains in the sports division support a different culture from that of the nursing faculty. The faculty in the math division have a various culture than those in the legislation institution. Actually, many institutions of college accept a diversity of cultures related to the huge selection of disciplines under their roofs.

Smaller organizations with fewer disciplines and scholastic offerings are likewise more probable to have neighborhood participants who hold similar sights and perspectives. Therefore, a merging of organizations requires a proactive and intentional procedure to recognize, empathize with, and aid protect old practices, values, and stories, while at the same time developing brand-new ones.

To be clear, we ought to recognize that most organizations’ professors and personnel do hold shared values, specified by mission, history, customs, faculty promotion and period plans, and target student population. In lots of means, that specifies the society of the establishment.

Why Higher Ed Mergers Differ

For this reason, society may be more crucial to mergings in other fields than in higher education. Additionally, there is little question that mergings in higher education are quite various from mergings in other market sectors because of college governance frameworks, employment contracts and settlement, missions and other essential metrics.

Pre-Merger Cultural Understanding

That’s why it’s critical to understand– as best as possible, without criticism or admonishment– the cultural workings of various other organizations before considering a significant calculated collaboration or merging with them. This helps manage and modulate just how approach is executed without always establishing the method itself.

I led the merger of a health sciences college with a liberal arts university– 2 organizations with long, deep backgrounds and extraordinarily different societies. In the 13-plus years because that merging, the college has had regular enrollment development and has enhanced its study funding.