Leadership actions. The extent to which the CEO and upper management in the
combined organization are aligned with the desired endstate and in sync with
one another gives credibility to and breathes life into messages about the
new culture. Alignment is most clear to employees when executives model behaviors
consistent with the desired culture (Chatman & Cha, 2003). Besides talking about overcoming a “silo mentality” in a combined professional services firm, a senior vice president invited representatives from other functions to his staff meetings. He also asked his HR team to devise a bonus scheme to reward cross-unit cooperation