PART 1 ANALYSIS OF IMPACTS

Part 1: Analysis of Impacts
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Abstract
Mergers and Acquisition is an important process for the businesses that wish to combine their strengths and increase their market shares. However, there exist serious challenges both during and after merging that can dictate the failure of the resultant business. Communication breakdown between the leadership of the business and its stakeholder is one of the factors that contribute to the failure of any merger deal. In this paper, a general perspective of merger transaction between AT & T and Time Warner Inc. and worth $85.4 billion is analyzed to identify the stakeholders at risk, their concerns and strategies to mitigate communication issues at their level. This study concludes that an effective communication plan with interactive strategies is necessary to keep each stakeholder participating. Additionally, strategies outlined in such plan must influence effectiveness, appropriateness, and ability to evaluate the impacts of each message the company sends to its stakeholders. Consequently, the stakeholders can achieve their best performance for increased productivity, productivity, and growth of the business.
Keywords: Merge and acquisition, AT &T, Time Warner Inc., stakeholders, communication plan, strategies, recommendations, gossips, rumors.
Part 1: Analysis of Impacts
Mergers deals involve two businesses joining to form one with the aims of increasing market shares, reduce competition, improve productivity and achieve high profitability.

However, issues can cause the resultant firm to decline. The merging between AT & T and Time Warner Inc. can pose great challenges, particularly in its communication with stakeholders. Therefore, the companies must have effective communication strategies to see that the planned $85.4 billion media giant successfully operates productively and profitably.
In this deal, three key internal stakeholders to be affected are managers, employees, and shareholders. According to King and Taylor (2012), employees are critical in a merger process, and effective communication with them is vital to the success of the business. In most cases, they are ignored resulting in reduced morale and productivity. They become stressed about their job and see the planned change as a dislocating and upsetting. Managers also experience challenges when trying to harmonize strategies from both sides for common goals (Rivero, 2013). At times, they required withholding some important information from employees. Consequently, employees may engage in rumors and gossips that ultimately corrodes trust and transparency.
Finally, shareholders become affected if proper communication lacks since they need to know the need, reasons and the benefits of merging. Upon merge completion, they are included in making decisions to ensure the company operate and progress with all internal stakeholder on board. Additionally, external stakeholders such as customers, suppliers or vendors, advisors and government regulators receive the right information often and promptly (King & Taylor, 2012). Importantly, customers must be informed about the process and benefits that comes with it, failure to which causes a breakdown and force them to buy from competitors. Similarly, effective communication strategies are required to keep suppliers aware of the changes and progress of the company. This will help them structure their services, timelines and other logistic details to satisfy the needs of the new company without compromise.
In addressing the above issues at each stakeholder’s level, a need for developing a communication plan that is effective and engaging with each exists. Therefore, the communication and engagement processes will be diverse as the stakeholders involved and will improve their participation in the success of M&A. Also, communications should be open and free of biases to ensure that all stakeholders can access information conveniently (King & Taylor, 2012). Moreover, the plan should use effective platforms depending on the criticality of the message. For example, the company should use calls in urgent matters as opposed to using of emails and newspaper. Finally, it is important that information concerning M&A process and change implementation be disseminated to all stakeholders promptly to prevent employee’s speculations and gossips.
Leadership has an important role in shaping up effective communication that prevents destructive gossips and rumors. Here, the leadership should ensure clear and effective communication with all stakeholders. Also, it should ensure that critical information is handled with utmost secrecy to avoid leaking to wrong recipients (Cellier & Laine, 2014). For example, any information revealing specific employees to be fired should be protected. Furthermore, leadership should see that any emerging rumor is addressed accordingly to prevent further spread (Rivero 2013). Here, development of policies and procedures can be highly helpful when addressing the rumors. Alternatively, the leadership of the company can ignore rumors, especially when paying attention can intensify the damages.
Finally, it is imperative to ensure that the communication strategies are aligned with the business values and missions. This can be by ensuring that strategies express the aims and objective, the profile of the audience, and description of the message clearly (Cellier & Laine, 2014). Also, it should reveal a clear plan of action and process of evaluating the impacts of the communication
In brief, the merging of AT &T and Time Warner Inc. will have different impacts to their stakeholders. The greatest challenge is ensuring effective communication between leadership and its stakeholders. For this reason, the company needs to come up with a quality communication plan that comprises of engaging strategies. Consequently, all stakeholders will contribute toward the success of the business.
References
Cellier, C., & Laine, J. (2014). Recommendations for improving internal communication at UM. Montana: Provost and Gordy Pace in Information Technology.
King, D. R., & Taylor, R. W. (2012). Beyond the numbers: Seven stakeholders to consider in improving acquisition outcomes. Graziadio Business Report, 15, 2.)
Rivero, O. (2013). Rumors in the Workplace Affecting Organizational Change Readiness. Global Journal of Management and Business Research Administration and Management, 13(12), 1-2.