A high level of employees' organizational identification in early merger integration : its impact on leader behavior effectiveness : an empirical analysis on StatoilHydro merger

Abstract

StatiolHydro’s internal survey result reveals that employees have already identified themselves strongly with the firm in current merger integration phase. The purpose of the thesis is to learn how such employees’ organizational identification as leadership context influences the effectiveness of leader behavior at StatoilHydro. Although the analysis result shows that this particular leadership context does not affect the effectiveness of leader behavior, the analysis also discovers that the total contribution of leader behavior and this leadership context leads to a greater result than the result of leader behavior contribution alone. This result highlights the significance of leadership context in relation to StatoilHydro merger performance. If managed properly, the additive effect between leadership context and leader behavior may contribute to the acceleration of synergy realization that StatoilHydro aims to achieve.