Three decades of strategic management research on M&As: Citations, co-citations, and topics

Merger and acquisitions (M&As) strategies have been growingly deployed by firms for their domestic and international expansion, in order to redefine their business scope or take advantage of emerging opportunities. In this paper we conduct a bibliometric study of the extant strategy research on M&As, assessed by the articles published in the main journal for strategic management studies over the period 1984–2010. Results reveal the highest impact works (articles and books), the intellectual ties among authors and theories that form five main clusters of research, and the topics delved into. Performance effects, M&As as diversification strategies, and resource- and capabilities-based topics have dominated the extant research. The study contributes to the existing knowledge on M&As by taking stock of the accumulated knowledge and research direction, complementing other literature reviews with a strategic management perspective. Thus, we provide a rear view of the field, which facilitates detecting untapped gaps that may provide generous avenues for future research.