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The purpose of this research paper is to explore the learning process associated with international mergers and acquisitions (M&A) integration strategies.

The paper employs a comparative case study methodology, utilising qualitative data through in‐depth interviews with top management responsible for integration strategies. Three pairs of major international firms from the USA and the UK, USA and Sweden and USA and Germany were studied.

The paper empirically demonstrates that careful and well‐planned integration strategies are responsible for sustainable learning occurring, leading to desirable synergies between firms engaged in a merger process.

The interviews took place at higher/top levels of the organisations. A more comprehensive picture would include other lower levels of each organisation structure.

Based on the data analysis, an integrative model for learning related to M&A is developed. This model would help organisations, planning on engaging in international M&A activity, to maximise the learning from the process.

This is a practical/empirical study, supporting the available theory on the subject in the literature. The research approach was innovative, as it collected relevant data from top executive board members, exploring their own views on the barriers for learning and on the ways to minimise them.

Explores the challenges and opportunities in integration processes, and the factors responsible for the success of cross‐boarder acquisitions within related industries. Emphasises the corporate strategies the three partnered companies used to maximise synergies, and to minimise the negative effects of the unavoidable, but necessary and complex, acculturation process. Evidence extracted from these case studies highlights that successful co‐operation between the firms resulted from the learning process developed by the partners. Knowledge acquisition and the subsequent organisational learning were the important desirable outcomes of the acquisition processes experienced by the organisations under study. The paper is structured as follows: a literature review on integration strategies and cultural impact on mergers and acquisitions precedes the three success stories. Accounts originating from semi‐structured interviews with top executives of Deutsche Bank – Bankers Trust; British Petroleum – Amoco; and Ford – Volvo are compared and contrasted with the literature. Outlines the results achieved in this self‐contained initial stage of an ongoing research project.

All too often, when companies are involved in a merger or acquisition, the benefits can be diminished by a lingering “us and them” attitude by people in the two formerly separate firms. Many such alliances do not meet their financial and strategic expectations because of a failure to get both groups working as one, sharing knowledge and expertise.

The purpose of this article is to investigate how political skill relates to career decisions and occupational fit.

The study utilizes undergraduate business majors to determine how their level of political skill influences their choice of career/major in a Holland‐type framework. Hypotheses are tested using logistic regression.

The paper finds that there is general support for the proposition that political skill influences the pursuit of social and enterprising majors/careers.

While choice of major is a strong indicator of occupational choice, it is not a direct measure of individual careers. However, the results provide insight regarding how organizational politics relates to individual careers and suggests the need for further study.

The paper provides a valuable additional factor for assessing career fit.

This paper is the first to critically examine organizational politics with reference to career choices rather than career outcomes and provides insight into how these affect satisfaction and success.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine individual perceptions about the impact that social media use has on career satisfaction and perceived career benefits. We examined whether informal online learning through “typical” types of social media behaviors (e.g. liking a post or messaging another user) and “networking” types of social media behaviors (e.g. endorsing another user, writing recommendations, going “live,” or looking for a job) impacted career-related perceptions.

In this study, we analyzed Amazon Mechanical Turk survey data gathered from adult participants (n = 475). We focused our inquiry specifically on two social media sites, Facebook and LinkedIn. We asked participants about their social media use and behaviors, as well as their perceptions of career satisfaction and career benefits related to social media.

We found that both typical and networking types of social media behaviors positively predicted the “knowing whom” career competency (defined as career relevant networks and contacts that individuals use to develop their careers) and career satisfaction. Only networking behaviors were positively associated with perceived career benefits of social media use. We further found that LinkedIn users’ career satisfaction was lower compared to non-LinkedIn users.

This study adds to the small, but growing body of career research focusing on social capital and social media. Our results suggest that informal online learning via social media may have a positive impact on employees’ career-related perceptions.

Internal auditors should consider the risks pertinent to an auditee when planning the work. Internal auditors may select a procedures‐driven approach or a risk‐driven approach. In a procedures‐driven approach, the audit procedures are chosen without full consideration of the risks present. Rather, the internal auditor may use procedures because they are commonly employed or because they were used on the last examination of the auditee. In a risk‐driven approach, specific procedures are planned only after consideration of the risks. A risk‐driven approach is generally more effective and efficient than a procedures‐driven approach because the internal auditor′s efforts are focused on areas with relatively more risk.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the concept of psychological contracts underpinned by relational/transactional exchanges provides an adequate description of knowledge workers' contracts.

The research approach uses interviews with ten scientists from within a pre‐eminent Australian scientific research and development organization, the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

The research strong evidence of an ideological currency within the psychological contract for this set of knowledge workers.

The research raises questions over the role of normative occupation‐specific beliefs about work, and the sharing of common currency elements by individuals in the same organization within the same occupation. The analysis lends support to calls in the literature for a reconsideration of the transactional/relational interpretative framework that underpins the psychological contract.

This exploratory study lends support to calls in the psychological contract for the reconsideration of the cognitive‐perceptual definition of the concept and its transactional/relational interpretative framework.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new framework for early design stage utilizing the benefits of Kaizen events, and Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology. To gain a better understanding of the proposed method, a case study of a diesel engine development was presented where the proposed methodology was followed.

This paper proposes a hybrid Kaizen DFSS methodology consisting of four Kaizen milestone events with pre-work preceding these events. The events are in line with the four phases of DFSS methodology (define, characterize, optimize, and verify).

In order for the proposed method to succeed, few key enablers should be available such as management buy-in and support, effective resources utilization, and proper planning. However, this methodology should be utilized for key projects where criticality is high and deadlines are nearby.

As proved by two projects, one of them is presented in this paper; the use of the proposed methodology is effective and can bring significant positive changes to an organization.

Although Kaizen is an old and well-known process, it is to the best of the author’s knowledge that Kaizen has not been utilized in the early design stages of new product development projects. In this paper, a hybrid methodology combining traditional DFSS systematic approach conducted using Kaizen improvement events is proposed and supported by a real-life case study.