AOL, Time Warner Culture With Term Paper

This happened even though AOL was only the size of one small Time Warner division and only had experience managing a centralized, younger company. Different management approached caused friction among top management.

AOL management filled the majority of top management positions and critics charge that they were insensitive to the Time Warner culture. AOL President Bob Pittman became the merged company's co-chief operating officer, in charge of more than half the combined outfit's operations. In the merged company, Pittman served alongside COO Richard Parsons, the former president of Time Warner. But Pittman took the lion's share of responsibility, overseeing cable, Time Inc., HBO, Turner Broadcasting, the WB Network, and AOL. Parsons got New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. movies, Warner Music, and trade publishing. Parsons and Pittman reported to Gerald Levin, former chairman and chief executive at Time Warner and AOL's Steve Case. Time Warner General Counsel Christopher Bogart lost the top legal job to AOL's Paul Cappuccio. Time Warner Chief Financial Officer Joseph Ripp lost his position to his AOL counterpart, CFO Michael Kelly. The same was true for Time Warner Investor Relations Chief Joan Sumner.

While AOL and Time Warner may have had market synergies, cultural differences made their realization too challenging. The organizations had little in common and the decimation of the Time Warner management team took away any hope of building a suitable bridge between the two. The result has been dubbed one of the industry's largest merger failures.Bibliography

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Yank, Catherine. "Show Time for AOL Time Warner." Business Week 15 Jan 2001. http://www.businessweek.com/2001/01_03/b3715001.htm.

Johnson, Tom. "That's AOL Folks." CNN and Money Magazine. 2000, Jan. 10. http://money.cnn.com/2000/01/10/deals/aol_warner/.

Kuczynski, Alex. "Time Inc. Staff Adjusts Warily to Life Within AOL." New York Times 23 Apr. 2001. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/23/business/23TIME.html?ex=1102395600&en=24969f0fa3719a69&ei=5070&oref=regi.

Houston, Frank. "AOL/TW Spells Big." Columbia Journalism Review 01 Jul 2001. http://archives.cjr.org/year/01/4/houston.asp.

Yank, Catherine. "Show Time for AOL Time Warner." Business Week 15 Jan 2001. http://www.businessweek.com/2001/01_03/b3715001.htm.

Combine and Conquer." Darwin Magazine Oct. 2001 http://www.darwinmag.com/read/100101/combine.html.

Shook, David. "AOL-Time Warner: A Conquest, Not a Marriage." Business Week 29 Jun 2000. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/june2000/nf00629d.htm......