Section Threethe company made 41 acquisitions. In addition, the company
planned to make as many as 25 more acquisitions in 2000.
While Cisco’s number of acquisitions is remarkable, its success
in assimilating acquired firms has been one of the keys to its
success. Cisco’s flexible planned approach for assimilating new
employees from acquisitions contrasts with the experiences of
many other companies that have mishandled acquisitions, often
because of failures to plan for human resource issues. In
addition, the company’s early application of the Internet to its
human resource function also points out the fundamental role
of change at Cisco.^13 Admittedly, Cisco’s example of growth is
extreme, but it illustrates how flexibility is required in many
environments.
Responsibility for Human Resource Planning
In early practice, human resource planning was often the
responsibility of a specialist in the human resource area. This
planning was sometimes conducted with little involvement of
others in the organization. Not surprisingly, when planning was
conducted in this manner, the data supplied for use in
forecasting were often inaccurate. Managers were asked to
take the time to supply information for something that they did
not understand. Because they did not see how forecasts could
help their job performance, the value of forecasts was not
appreciated. These earlier experiences reveal that when the