In the late 90's, CN merged with Illinois Central Railway. It made a lot of sense on paper, as CN's rails went mainly east-west while IC's went north-south along the Mississippi. And in the rail industry at the time, everyone was merging with everyone. However, over 10 years after the fact, when I showed up for my internship, I still experienced a distinct separateness.
The two cultures were never able to meld together, and so as a result, it often seemed like a competition or conflict when dealing with other divisions of the company, divisions that might have previously been from the other railway. One specific example that I can recall is the Locomotive Repair Shop that was located in Homewood, IL. Before the merger, it was one of the biggest, fastest, most impressive train shops in the country. However, after the merger, it wasn't as good as the one CN had somewhere else. And so it was ordered to be dismantled, to the theoretical benefit of the company, but a very hurtful move to those who were then being payed to dismantle their own job site.
On the topic of transaction costs, I feel that the relationship between company sprawl and transaction costs cannot be overstated. It is not necessarily the number of employees that increases the internal transaction costs, but their organization: how many departments with how many sub-departments. I think it is interesting as you can see this managerial approach in many new tech start-ups.
This is an interesting first effort and the fact that the company you worked for was previously two separate companies that had merged is interesting and potentially a good topic to write about. What is missing here is more about your own experiences and how you learned these things about the company.
ReplyDeleteLet me illustrate via various questions that follow. What would a signals and communication intern do had there not been the choice of working in the field or not? If you had liked the internship, was this a possible career for you after graduation from the U of I? I gather now that you you won't go to work for this company as you didn't so another internship with them last summer. Whose decision was that? Yours or theirs?
I'm also curious about how you found this internship. Was it via a career fair on campus or from connections you had at home?
Then you might have spent more time on your work as an intern and what, if anything, about it you enjoyed. Even in a company which has political decision because of an imperfect merger, employees well down the in the hierarchy might like the work. You wrote that you experienced distinct separateness. Was that the core of your experience as an intern or just something in passing? It's hard to tell from what you've written.
Also, your sentence in the third paragraph which starts, "However, after the merger,..." and seems to be an indictment against CN is unclear (at least it is unclear to me) on whether CN lat that shop deteriorate or if even at peak performance it judged the shop (perhaps mistakenly) as inferior. And I didn't understand how the dismantling of the shop impacted your internship.
Perhaps you knew others who worked for CN or got laid off by them. If not, it is very hard for me as reader or this piece to connect the dots. If something like that did in fact happen, then you're only telling part of the story here.
Finally, let me react to what you say in the last paragraph. Was the merger itself a mistake? Perhaps it was. That sometimes happens. Post merger, were there more departments in the new CN than there were in either of the companies pre-merger? That is not clear to me from what you've said. If greater hierarchy imposes costs, as you seem to be saying, you should support that with an example or two that explains how that greater hierarchy came into being and how it makes it difficult to get things done.