An Overview of Three Decades of Mergers and Acquisitions Research

Abstract

Mergers and acquisitions (MA) have long attracted managers’ attention and have been researched in different perspectives and using different theories. In this study we grasp the wealth of extant research in the field of MAs. We conducted a bibliometric study of 635 articles on strategic management and international business research published in 34 highly ranked management journals between 1983 and 2012. We performed citation, co-citation and factor analyses to uncover the issues examined by scholars, the main theoretical approaches and themes researched. The results show a relative shift from economic and financial approaches to knowledge-based and organizational learning perspectives in recent years. There was also an evolution from assessing the performance of firms after an MA to seeking an understanding of what may drive synergy creation after the integration process. Furthermore we observed an increasing interest in cross-border MAs. We discuss our findings, identifying gaps and suggesting paths for future research.