Bridge-builder—game on!

You don’t need to look far today to see how far many great, highly acclaimed alliances have fallen. In the media, we learn nearly every day about how these noteworthy successes become failures or turn out to be fiascos accompanied by large financial losses. These disappointments, often failures of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), have shone a spotlight on the “human factor,” the role that individuals play in making a business a success. Even when the products and numbers fit, it is still people who are carrying out the day-to-day business at the operational level. Which type of corporate culture is most supportive (promising, favorable)? Which personality traits and kind of skills do we need for successful collaborations across cultures and countries? Are there techniques to learn or ways to measure how well a collaboration is going in order to predict possible issues in advance in a way that will help minimize the chance of failure—on personal and corporate levels—as well as to maximize the sustainable success of cross-cultural fusions and collaborations?

As globalization has set in, it has become easy to forget just how far we have come and the effects it has had on our daily life. Consider, for example, the products you use on a daily basis. Where have they come from? While we may have purchased them at the supermarket, they came to the store’s shelves from elsewhere, often a far-flung land. That computer you’re using or the smartphone in your hand was developed by a global company, probably one of the major players: Apple, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, or Sony. Those big names got to where they are by taking over companies which had already made a name for themselves by producing quality products. These mergers and acquisitions (M&A), whether in the automotive industry, banking, or telecommunications, are an ever-present part of daily life in a globalized world (Camerer & Mader, 2012, p.76).