Though the concept of `culture clash' has been widely discussed and written about in the context of mergers and acquisitions, the literature has been relatively silent about how to empirically measure this phenomenon. Given the difficulties associated with developing and testing such a measure - especially gaining access to sufficient numbers of firms which have recently experienced a merger - it is not surprising that little has been done. In this paper, we present a post-hoc analysis of a cultural compatibility index that was developed as part of a multi-study survey that we conducted. In addition, we provide evidence of the measure's integrity in two different national cultures. The analysis is based on a survey of executives of acquired British and French firms as to their perceptions of compatibility with the organizational values of the buying firms. We found evidence to suggest that the measure is a reliable and valid congruence index within and across national contexts.
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