People management in mergers and acquisitions in Sri Lanka: Employee perceptions

Though there is an increasing interest in and a growing amount of literature available on people management aspects of M&As, few studies have empirically examined employee experiences. Further, no such studies have been conducted in the Asian developing country context. From a practical standpoint results will provide practitioners with information that would be valuable for better understanding of employee experiences of M&As to better understand and address people management issues in M&As. The aim of the article is to present, compare and discuss empirical evidence on employees' interpretations of their experiences of people management in two different types of bank mergers- extension merger and collaborative merger in Sri Lanka. For the study two banks were selected which had undergone an extension merger and a collaborative merger. 109 employees from the two banks responded to the survey questionnaire. The findings led to reveal that the employee perceptions are affected by the type of the merger and employees are less satisfied in the collaborative merger than in the extension merger. Further, findings led to revel that age, gender and marital status do influence the perceptions of the respondents and among those age is the most influencing variable. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of the findings and research areas for further inquiry and understanding.