Roles of Human Resource in Managing Employee Expectation Influence the Success of Merger & Acquisition

Human Resource has always been acknowledged as the eyes and ears for the management. Being an intermediary, human resource was given a huge responsibility in ensuring engagement amongst the employees. Therefore,the purpose of this study is to examine and gain a better understanding on the relationship between human resource strategic roles as leader, communicator and committed party in managing employee expectation, subsequently contributes to the success of merger and acquisition (M&A). This study was done amongst the employees of an oil & gas company. 100 direct hire of SapuraCrest Petroleuln Berhad completed the survey for this study in regards to their expectation on the announcement of M&A. Data were gathered through questionnaires and was being analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Amongst all the statistical analysis derived, regression analysis has been utilised to determine, which has the most impact to employee expectation amongst the three factors; leadership, communication and commitment. The result shows that only two out of three factors found to have positive relationship to employee expectation towards the success of M&A. Meanwhile,commitment has been observed to portray negative relationship instead. The finding suggests that in order to manage the employee expectation in particular, the management should ensure that human resource is involved at the very early stage of M&A.