THE INFLUENCE OF LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR TOWARDS SAFETY CULTURE INTEGRATION IN A COMPANY POST ACQUISITION

• Main Author: Endah Rachmawati, Ike
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/79845
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

In a business environment, when companies want to enlarge their portfolio or expand their operation, merger and acquisition process could be one of the ways to put the perspective into reality. This acquisition approach was also chosen by PT ELI when they want to expand their lubricant business operations in Indonesia for when in 2018, they acquired PT Merah Putih Biru. PT Merah Putih Biru is a major lubricant business player in Indonesia that was established for almost 30 years. Being acquired after almost 30 years of operation surely brought an element of surprise to the organization and the workers as well, especially for the cultural difference where PT ELI is a multinational company and PT Merah Putih Biru is a local company. Upon the acquisition, it was noticed by the leadership of PT Merah Putih Biru that the company culture generally and safety culture specifically is different. As the first entrance prior to the working level, the leadership were surely exposed more about the changes, so they are expected to be the agent of change as they have to communicate to the working level. However, since culture is fundamental for all workers, the leadership should be occupied with behavioral skill not to mention the base business knowledge that they have to be familiar with. The behavioral skill is needed to solidify the leadership behavior and to achieve the objective of having a smooth transition of culture integration postacquisition. This is due to the leaders should already have their leadership way, hence behavioral skill is needed more to support the cultural integration in the company and an effective communication to the employee. To this extend, 5 (five) Exemplary Leadership theory from Kouzes and Posner is the best approach to occupy the leadership with. Those theories provided interpersonal skill and approach from leader to the working level. In addition, for communicating effectively, the leader could be occupied with some Computer Based Training (CBT) from company’s intranet that they could take at their most convenience time to sharpen their interpersonal communication considering how fundamental communication is in an ecosystem especially in a work environment. From leadership side, now we move to the point of view from the employees about the changes, how the leadership could help them integrate with the new culture flawlessly and how leadership could overcome the challenge that may arise during the culture integration. To gather candid feedback from the workers in the company, ii an interview to the worker of PT Merah Putih Biru was held by selecting the informants based on their service year which ranged between 6 to 15 years of service. The questions for the interview have been reviewed by the Safety Manager to ensure they are fit for purpose and could solve the problem of the culture integration. As the result, it was confirmed during the interview that the culture of the company was indeed changed post-acquisition to become more stringent in terms of safety, of which they feel that safety culture change is a good thing. And to provide a view about their leaders, all the informants agreed that the behavior of their leaders were changing (post-acquisition) as well. They feel like their leaders are more aware of safety and show more care to the workers. However, they expect that their leadership are providing consistent safety culture implementation and walk the talk. This is due to the most challenge and barrier they face during the safety culture integration was changing the people mindset and habit from the years they have been working on the company until now. As a solution to the challenge and to sustain the safety culture implementation and integration, several programs are developed in addition to the existing program of which the prioritization will be based on the program urgency as well as the base business process.