Making Mergers Work: The Strategic Importance of People. (Bookshelf).

Jeffrey A. Schmidt. Towers Perrin/Society for Human Resources Management, 302 pages.

Making Mergers Work opens with a series of charts and tables drawn from research by well-known research and consulting firm Towers Perrin, where the editor, Jeffrey Schmidt, is a managing director. As the charts quickly make clear, there are major differences between successful and unsuccessful mergers -- and similar differences in attitudes, synergies and the ability to overcome obstacles between companies that succeeded and those who didn't.

In a series of chapters penned by different writers, the book explores traditional and "new" perspectives on M&A, including such core disciplines as due diligence, integration planning and implementation. But a fundamental tenet throughout is the notion that people are the key to making a merger work, and that people-related problems -- such as culture clashes, management disputes, loss of talent and the inability to manage change -- are the basic reasons why mergers fail.

Making Mergers Work has the look and heft of a textbook, with a plethora of charts, tables and bullet points sprinkled throughout. It's far more of a resource than a book to be read straight through, but that's a large part of its effectiveness. It's not a breezy, shallow consultant write-through; instead, it's meaty, deep and probing, which makes it a valuable addition to the merger literature.