In today's business world, Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) have become a fact of life, where change is an unavoidable consequence. But getting employees from different organizations to work on a common platform is one of the greatest challenge with M&As. Thus, despite the highest degree of strategy and huge investments, the majority of M&As fail miserably. Research also recommends that up to 65% of failed M&As are due to `people issues'. Considering all these, this article discusses about M&A as a growth strategy, reasons for its failure, and suggests some of the critical people issues to be addressed.

Organizational change takes place when a company makes a transition from its current position to some desired future status. Management of organizational change is essentially a process of planning and implementing changes in such a manner as to minimize cost and employee resistance, while at the same time maximizing the effectiveness of the change endeavor. Today's business environment requires companies to undertake changes almost continuously in order to remain competitive. Factors such as globalization of markets and quickly evolving technology compel businesses to respond in order to subsist. M&A is one of the major causes of organizational change. A merger is a mixture of two or more companies to form a new company, whereas an acquisition is the procurement of one company by another with no new company being formed.

The current global economy is exemplified by multidimensional flows of products, services, people, thoughts and capital. A complex network of interconnections is bringing new prospects and options to companies and individuals around the world. A key aspect behind the speed of global growth has been the adoption of M&A as a means to quickly access new markets, assets and potentials. Indian companies have been dynamic and noticeable players within this new M&A trend. This can be clearly understood from Figure 1.

Figure 1 illustrates the increase in both the number and size of M&A deals by Indian companies over the period of 2000-2007. According to Accenture's analysis of data from Thomson Financial, as many as 543 M&A deals were completed by Indian companies both at home and abroad in 2007, with a total value of $30.4 bn. This represents an annual growth rate of around 28.3% in deal value during the period 2000-2007.

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