Why Companies Do Not Pursue Attractive Mergers and Acquisitions ...

Chapter 1

Introduction

Instead of seeking to understand strategic change…it may ultimately be better to take the roundabout and admittedly less satisfying task of seeking to understand the non-event.

—Mohr (1986)

1.1. Introduction

This chapter describes the need to improve acquisition performance, the managerial problem that provides the rationale for this research. It incorporates a comparison of the perspectives used to address performance in the extant literature and the perspective used in this study.

1.1.1. Main Points

Mergers and acquisitions have proliferated across industry and geographic boundaries and are commonplace. Decisions regarding mergers and acquisitions are among the most crucial faced by managers, yet many result in poor outcomes as evidenced by a failure rate on the order of one third to one half of all M&As that are consummated.