Thirty Years of Mergers and Acquisitions Research: Recent Advances and Future Opportunities

TLDR

Mergers and acquisitions have attracted extensive interest across management disciplines for three decades, with research focusing on strategic fit, organizational fit, and the acquisition process. The study examines why high failure rates persist despite research advances, underscoring opportunities for future M&A research. The paper reviews recent achievements across the three research streams. Despite research progress, M&A failure rates remain consistently high.

Abstract

The complex phenomenon that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) represent has attracted substantial interest from a variety of management disciplines over the past 30 years. Three primary streams of enquiry can be identified within the strategic and behavioural literature, which focus on the issues of strategic fit, organizational fit and the acquisition process itself. The recent achievements within each of these research streams are briefly reviewed. However, in parallel to these research advances, the failure rates of mergers and acquisitions have remained consistently high. Possible reasons for this dichotomy are discussed, which in turn highlight the significant opportunities that remain for future M&A research.