Study of Post Acquisition Staff Retention within Business Dissertation

Study of Post Acquisition Staff Retention within Business Organisations - Dissertation Example The analyzed quantitative studies show that Kraft did not have some knowledge practices of staff retention after taking over Cadbury, which could enable it to retain some of the most skillful and knowledgeable staff. The study recommended the adoption of a knowledge retention framework to be embedded in the Kraft’s knowledge management policy. INTRODUCTION Staff retention is the process that ensures that employees are retained or kept within a company (Kearney, 2010). This happens particularly to employees who have needed or valued skills or experience in a critical/scarce field where recruitment is quite difficult. Staff retention stems from the process of employment (Batellan, &Van Essen, 2010). It also occurs in mergers and acquisitions (Bourantas, & Nicandrous, 2012). Post-acquisition and merging, like employment are an important process, which should receive sufficient and careful attention to ensure it realizes its goal. After two or more companies merge, strategies empl oyed to ensure staff of the associated companies are retained determines  the successful operation of the merged company (Bourantas, & Nicandrous, 2012). This means that the recruitment, placement, replacements, and selection processes play a crucial role in predetermining the effectiveness of the retention strategy of the companies involved. According to Bower (2013) for such companies to succeed in staff retention, their retention strategy should be linked positively to the practices and processes of selection, placement, recruitment, development, remuneration, training, and performance appraisal. Retaining knowledge is often the prime goal for many organization that decide to merge (Hambrick, & Cannella, 2011). Studies indicate that knowledge, and skill retention is the prime reason why most organization opt to retain staff. Knowledge is identified as a resource that is strategic in providing competitive organizations advantage (Capron, 2010). Even though organizations have ide ntified the knowledge value, few of them have started to manage the efficiency of knowledge effectively (Capron, 2010). The management of knowledge for the creation of value is still a concern of any management. Even though different organization’s operations like finance, marketing, supply chain or sales, are appropriately mastered, the effective management roadmaps of knowledge is still under investigation. Managing knowledgeable, and skilled employees has increasingly become the key challenge for most organizations (Mitchell, Capron, & Dussuage, 2012). According to Samuel and Chipunza (2011) retaining high performing employees is a challenge to many organizations because these employees who are high skilled frequently shift jobs to seek for attractive jobs. The management of knowledge includes the identification of knowledge, development, sharing, acquisition, utilization, retention, and distribution (Montgometry. & Collis, 2010). Generally, employee turnover has become a major area of research from both practical, and theoretical stand point. From the theoretical stand point, understanding key causes of turnover may not only provide an overview of where specific turnover problems for the retailers lies, but also from the theoretical perspective, understanding the fundamental causes of turnover can provide an overview as to how to control this growing problem and identify where a retailers specific turnover