Journal of Higher Education Management 34,1 (2019)

campus employees (Bartels et al, 2006) and the balance between quantitative agreement and empowerment of involvement on the merging process is one of the main roles of institutional leader for the merging negotiation. The hired individuals gradually adopt the norms and practice of organization (Turner, 1986; Hogg and Abrams, 1988). In this aspect, institutional leader should have the adjustment of potential conflicts from the gap between the institutional adoption and cognitive understanding of organizational image. The leader can buffer the potential shocks under the high organizational uncertainty based on more psychological support for internal members (Sousa & Dierendonck, 2014) or provide sufficient commitment to the members (Mael & Ashforth, 1992). In sum, the complex stream of conflicts between staffs within institutions during the merging should be managed for the better institutional change.

The collaborative efforts to resolve the cognitive gaps between members contribute to induce the greater performance and entire well-being of the internal members (Sousa & Dierendonck, 2014).

The collaboration with partner Based on the management of internal conflicts within the institution, the institutional leaders consider the collaboration with partner for better institutional merging. When they negotiate with partner, the mission unification and agreement for common educational goal is dealt as an important issue. Terry, Carey and Callan (2001) discuss the internal member adjustment during the merging process in terms of their organizational status at pre-merger time. They show that the employees of the each merging organization tends to respond differently toward the merging process because they perceive the institutional identity differently and interact with each other by their legitimacy way for in-group relation. Taifel (1975) supports that the cognitive difference between internal members about their status to be legitimate is likely to react to the potential threat of merging process more negatively than their counterpart. The dominant group members who consider their position is concrete after merging react in negative manner for the future that the power relationship between internal members may change (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). In this aspect, the institutional leaders stay on the stage that they should manage the mediating the potential conflicts between cognitive protection of existing internal members against upcoming change and different perspectives from the external merging partner (Mottola et al, 1997; Terry & Callan, 1998). The corporate management of institutional leader for internal members cover different institutional values, such as organizational justice, behavioral ethnics, and social responsibilities (Rupp, Wright, Aryee, & Luo, 2015). The structural pattern of merging process and management of relevant members by the main institutional leaders intertwined with each other. For unified institutional mission and educational purpose, the institutional leaders participates in the merging process and they negotiate it with the partner based on the collective voice from inside toward the change. Those process of cognitive integration reflect the expectation of the employees’ potential benefits or threat (Schoennauer, 1967; Nayahandi & Malekzadey, 1988; Napier, 1989). Through the mechanism, the institutional leaders make a progress to create this strategic planning for merging in order to protect their own values or to persuade their institutional effectiveness toward partner.

In the merging process, the participants negotiate several issues to meet their own needs in diverse ways. They have a responsibility to redistribute the available resources within institutions and decide which part have a certain role to do in the newly merged institution.

They overview the similarity or differences about individual structure of each institution and 76