Abstract:
Several investigations came to the conclusion that, considering in retrospect, most Mergers & Acquisitions were not successful. Differences in the corporate cultures are often quoted as being responsible for the failures. So, the question arises how such failures can be prevented in future. Conducting a Cultural Due Diligence is a possibility to examine differences in corporate cultures, even before a merger takes place. That is why, after a description of general culture concepts, we discuss various attempts at Cultural Due Diligence of consultancy firms. Referring to these attempts at Cultural Due Diligence as well as to the general culture concepts, we draft a further developed concept at the end of this working paper.