Organisational impediments to rational acquisition planning: Organisational behaviour scholars have considered a wide range of impediments to rational decision-making. This diversity reflects, in part, the absence of a predominant paradigm in the parent discipline, or, as Astley and Van de Ven put it, “theoretical pluralism…[with] different schools having such different logics and vocabularies that they do not speak to each other” (Astley & Van de Ven, 1983, p. 245). Part of this diverse body of literature builds upon the global critique of decision-making by Cyert and March (1963), who described how conflicting goals, limited search, and standard operating procedures or organisational routines affect decision-making.
While Cyert and March’s (1963) work deals with operating decisions, Carter extended their framework to strategic decisions (1971a, 1971b). He described how biases develop as a result of one organisational unit or level filtering or withholding information that could have an impact on the conclusions drawn about a candidate’s attractiveness by another unit or level. Relating his findings to BDT theories of overcommitment, Carter hypothesised a phenomenon that he refered to as “post-decision uncertainty absorption” (1971a, p. 271). He illustrated this phenomenon with an example of the manager who does not perceive or process correctly information that would make an acquisition candidate less attractive after the decision has been made to pursue the candidate.
In addition to bias, Carter noted political behaviour, around which much research has coalesced. A number of other social impediments to effective decision-making are examined in this stream. For example, Janis (1985) identified the emergence of overly convergent options as a result of “group think”. And Haunschild (1993) finds support for interorganisational imitation in the M&A domain.
Much of this stream is based on assumptions similar to those of the behavioural impediments stream, but they relate to group rather than individual motivations, limitations, and behaviours.
