The merger between Daimler and Chrysler was designed to create a complex multinational automobile manufacturer with a market worth of more than $130 billion. The merger was supposed to ring paradigm shifts in the way that cars would be made and driven. But unfortunately, the great upheavals and changes that were predicted did not happen and the merger sunk into a morass of cultural mismatch. Synergies between Daimler, a German company, and Chrysler, an American company could not develop. For the merger to be successful, a climate of mutual trust, learning, creativity common values, and ethics needs to be developed first. When two companies merge, there needs to be a balanced change management policy where both parties are given their due right and encouraged to exchange ideas for mutual growth. Daimler tried to ramrod its policies on the resilient Americans who resisted and this resulted in a war of attrition in which neither party won. This case study analyses the Daimler-Chrysler merger and the change management issues that the two companies faced.
