Mergers and Acquisitions

1Introduction

A merger or acquisition is not initiated with the expectation that everything will stay the same. While acquisitions were recorded in the Roman Empire (Carmeli & Markman, 2011), academic research on the phenomenon is more recent, but growing. From an initial study by Dewing (1921), a sharp increase in acquisition research from the 1980s has followed different paths. Finance scholars dominated acquisition research until the publishing of a book by Haspeslagh and Jemison (1991) that continues to influence acquisition research. Subsequent management research has largely developed into four schools of thought surrounding financial or economic, strategic management, organizational behavior, and process perspectives (Bauer & Matzler, ...