Certainly both companies should devote part of their postmerger planning session to this question. Answers will vary according to the two companies’ situations.

If the acquirer has fully developed statements that apply perfectly to the acquired company, and if the acquired company has no statement of its own, the job of integration will be easy. This will be merely a matter of educating acquired company employees in the statements of the acquirer. If, on the other hand, both companies have statements, a greater effort may be required.

First of all, management must determine who will be drafting the statements. Each mission statement should be developed by senior line managers, since mission statements pertain to lines of business, whereas policy statements (or a code of conduct) should be developed by senior legal staff. The vision statement should be developed by the chief executive and board of directors, ideally based on the advice of outside experts who have a sense of the company’s potential future.

Beyond this, the development of each statement should proceed step by step. The working group that is drafting the statement should obtain comparable statements and work from these, developing a content and style appropriate to the company’s circumstances. Mission and vision statements can be brief, but codes of conduct are longer and are often supported by numerous specific policies. Wells Fargo, a bank that is striving to improve in this area, has a code of ethics that references multiple  additional policies..[i]