Speaker: Sandor Talas, University of Queensland
Title: ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ – the Impact of Emotional Memories in M&A Organizational Change
Date: Wednesday, 22 May 2024
Time: 12:00pm – 2:00pm
Venue: Building 24, Copland, Seminar Room 1106
Marina Iskhakova is the host of this visit
Abstract
Emotional memories of personal experiences can influence people’s thinking, feelings, and behaviour for many years after the experience. Everybody who has had a romantic dispute knows that. Mergers and acquisitions are prolonged periods of organisational change characterised by intense emotionality. Emotional memories of organisational change events can influence behaviours, self-regulation, trust, decision-making, and self-esteem, and many more human aspects of organisations. In addition, emotional memories are transitory dynamic mental constructs that change over time. Currently, both practice and academia lack an understanding of how emotional memories are generated and what circumstances and actions shape them. Yet Orwell’s conclusion, “He who controls the past controls the future,” is also likely valid in a business context. Management that tries to shape an organisation's future should pay attention to the memories of the past. Scholars studying prolonged organisational change processes should consider the impact and the dynamics of emotional memories.
Bio
Sandor Talas is a PhD candidate at The University of Queensland Business School, Australia. He also holds an MSc from Stanford University and an MBA from London Business School. His research is focused on the human aspects of organisational change during Mergers and Acquisitions and the impact of increased emotional and cognitive load on employee performance and behaviour. Before starting his doctoral studies, Sandor worked as an advisor and manager for over two decades in international mergers and acquisitions in over 30 countries on three continents. He advised major multinational mergers as a consultant and merger management expert with McKinsey & Company, and he also worked with a range of smaller integration projects as an independent advisor. Sandor presented several papers on his research at the conferences of the Academy of Management, the Academy of International Business, the British Academy of Management, the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management, and the Australia and New Zealand International Business Academy. His paper Merger Failure as Self-Regulation Failure: An Organizational Change Phenomenon in Merger Integration won the Best Student-Led Paper Award in the Managerial and Organizational Cognition Division at the 2023 Academy of Management Meeting.