Olimpia Meglio

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at University of Naples Federico II

Acquisitions are complex and ambiguous events fraught with information asymmetries emphasizing market failure before an acquisition or organizational failure during integration. While often treated in isolation, market and organization failure are intertwined in acquisitions as integration planning starts before a deal is closed. Effective integrat...

[Call for Papers] This special issue seeks research that advances how managers can combine corporate restructuring activities to create value. We welcome manuscripts from differing research disciplines (e.g., economics, entrepreneurship, family business, finance, management, sociology) and research designs (e.g., conceptual, qualitative, quantitati...

Acquisition research is intensely concerned with how acquisitions affect economic value, primarily looking at shareholder value, while overlooking or ascribing other values a subordinate role. We argue that this is unnecessarily restrictive and leaves out important values in acquisitions. To remedy this state of affairs, we critically engage with t...

There are many studies on entrepreneurship education in business school curricula, but there is less research on pre-acceleration education programs at entrepreneurship laboratories. This is unfortunate, as entrepreneurship laboratories represent an important context for entrepreneurship education in that they combine a range of services and activi...

I apply a cognitive perspective to understand how primary cognitive mechanisms—simplification, elaboration, and interaction—have influenced the way scholars, as individuals and as a community, have queried acquisitions so far. While cognitive mechanisms have played an important role in advancing our grasp of acquisitions, they have also favored the...

The intersection of program management and acquisition research remains undeveloped. Within both research domains there is limited recognition of how senior and project managers frame change and influence the meaning construction of others in complex and ambiguous situations. We investigate how sensemaking and sensegiv-ing alternate within an acqui...

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The conventional discourse on corporate social responsibility (CSR) focuses on big companies and tends to neglect small, medium, and family firms. However, scholars state that simply scaling down CSR theories does not capture the variations in CSR choices across companies and contexts. The authors remedy this state of affairs by investigating an It...

Entrepreneurship, innovation, well-being, and sustainability represent the four pillars inspiring our call for papers and driving this Special Issue (hereafter SI) [...]

Mergers and acquisitions continue to attract interest from scholars and practitioners across the globe resulting in a sheer amount of scholarly works. Taken together these studies deal with a significant number of substantive issues, rely on different theoretical perspectives and employ different methods. Regrettably, we still seem to know very lit...

There is increasing recognition that a marketing, customer-based perspective in merger and acquisition (M&A) processes is needed. However, there is still limited information about how customers experience an acquisition and whether merging firms perceive their customers as assets to trade or as stakeholders to engage. In this chapter, the authors a...

Although business restructuring occurs frequently and it is important for the prosperity of family firms across generations, research on family firms has largely evolved separately from research on business restructuring. This is a missed opportunity, since the two domains are complementary, and understanding the context, process, content, and outc...

Mergers and acquisitions have significantly contributed to making the world globally connected, providing benefits from globalization through acquisition waves. Along with benefits, acquisitions have also accentuated many sustainability and responsibility issues that are central to both public discourse and global policies. Nonetheless, acquisition...

Constructs constitute the building blocks of theories. Construct measurement represents a key task for any scholar attempting to develop a theoretical contribution or an empirical study. In this chapter, we offer an overview of the measurement process, commonly portrayed in terms of technical issues, such as the validity or the reliability. In cont...

Integration is the key acquisition process. In this chapter, we reject the conventional idea that integration is a unitary concept and process. We trace the evolution of this construct by identifying fragments, layers, actors, and mechanisms that together make up the integration process: Integration is not one but many processes, involving sometime...

What are umbrella constructs and why they are popular? How do we analyze them? What is their contribution to the development of the management field in general, and the merger and acquisition one in particular? What roles can they play in research and practice? These are questions we delve into in this chapter. To achieve this aim, we critically re...

In this chapter, we dig into acquisition process(es). A process perspective has been a turning point in the evolution of the M&A field; it has dramatically influenced the way we conceive, research, and manage acquisitions. Our analysis signals the importance of replacing the simplistic and reductionist view of acquisition as a unitary process and w...

This chapter summarizes key findings and critically reflects on how they help us to move forward. Adopting an umbrella construct perspective helps to nuance the meanings of broad, complex, and inherently ambiguous phenomenon. Umbrella constructs are ambiguous as the phenomena they measure are themselves complex and ambiguous. This chapter does not...

“Olimpia Meglio and Svante Schriber have made significant contributions to our understanding of M&A providing them both perspective and credibility to assess our field and its opportunities. This book joins their prior contributions to provide a timely commentary on the primary constructs examined in M&A research and their evolution, as well as fut...

In this chapter we critically analyze a central construct in M&A research: acquisition performance. Acquisition performance has received considerable attention from scholars who have repeatedly attempted to gauge the effectiveness of acquisition strategies. The majority of empirical articles measure acquisition performance as the market reaction to...

In this chapter we propose a three-stage framework to analyze mergers and acquisitions in light of corporate social responsibility issues: mapping stakeholders, managing stakeholders, and measuring social impact. The framework also reflects the process nature of acquisitions. In this chapter, we specifically focus on the task of mapping stakeholder...

In this chapter we focus on the second stage of our framework—managing stakeholder and CSR in acquisitions. We build on a multidimensional classificatory framework that serves as a starting point for the identification of a repertoire of CSR strategies an acquiring company may actually choose while conducting an acquisition. These strategies are co...

Mergers and acquisitions represent a popular strategic choice companies rely upon to respond to external complexities and reconfigure business models. So far, scholars have been primarily concerned with their effects on shareholders. Their centrality represents a common thread in existing research that relies on shareholder value as a metric for ga...

In this concluding chapter, we discuss acquisition scholars as stakeholders who have influenced acquisition research. Acquisition scholars have largely shaped the academic discourse surrounding mergers and acquisitions, voicing some stakeholder views at the expense of others. We discuss possible explanations, analyze consequences of gap-spotting re...

In this chapter we reflect on methodological implications of studying acquisitions from a stakeholder perspective. Our aim is to discuss how established and novel methods could be fruitfully employed in acquisition research informed by a stakeholder lens. We specifically focus on different forms of ethnography, social network analysis, and discours...

The conventional discourse on corporate social responsibility (CSR) focuses on big companies and tends to neglect small, medium, and family firms. However, scholars state that simply scaling down CSR theories does not capture the variations in CSR choices across companies and contexts. The authors remedy this state of affairs by investigating an It...

Family businesses dominate the economic landscape and contribute to the market for corporate control across the globe, either as acquiring companies or as target. However, there is still limited research investigating acquisitions by or of family firms. The authors begin to remedy this gap by providing a narrative review of extant research. Finding...

While previous studies and management conventions often adopt a finance-centric perspective of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBM&A or CBA), we demonstrate that CBA can be an effective platform to build a global corporate social responsibility (CSR) program, and that CSR initiatives can be customized for different locales. These CSR-CBA int...

Acquisitions represent a strategy for enhancing competitive responsiveness in the global management of technology and innovation. Even more than single and domestic acquisitions, cross‐border acquisition programs present opportunities for firms seeking to sustain innovation. Yet, scant attention has been paid to the innovation dynamics of pursuing...

This book integrates two different but equally prominent themes in the management field: mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). It explores questions such as whether strategic goals overlap or conflict with sustainability choices, what the strategic and sustainability tensions are confronting expanding companies,...

In this paper, we study the multifaceted transformation of an emerging market firm making multiple acquisitions. Drawing on a process study of an acquisitions program spanning two decades, we examine the post-acquisition internationalization, integration and organizational identity dynamics of an Arabian Gulf EMNC serial acquirer. We find that the...

This chapter aims to explore in-depth the relationship between the venture capitalist and the venturebacked company and account for how this relationship unfolds over time. To achieve this, the authors present evidence from three process case studies. The field study presented in this chapter is partly retrospective and partly in real time and is b...

The advantage of speed is often invoked by academics and practitioners as an essential condition during post-acquisition integration, frequently without consideration of the impact earlier decisions have on acquisition speed. In this article, we examine the role speed plays in acquisitions across the acquisition process using research organized aro...

There is ample evidence of the influence of venture capital on the creation and growth of new ventures, yet scant attention has been paid to the heterogeneity of venture capitalists and their capacity to contribute to the dynamic growth of new ventures. This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature by exploring the notion that venture ca...

Acquisitions have generally been portrayed as a means to improving shareholders' wealth. To date, the debate regarding how to measure acquisition performance has generally discarded the idea that performance should reflect the interests of stakeholders other than shareholders. In this chapter, I advance the importance of enlarging the domain of acq...

The Routledge Companion to Mergers and Acquisitions takes a detailed look at this multifacted subject using a novel framework of four domains – substantive issues, contextual issues, methodological issues and conceptual issues. Drawing on the expertise of its international team of contributors, the volume surveys the state of the field, including e...

The results of research on mergers and acquisitions often point to a need to improve acquisition outcomes and lessen the organizational turmoil that can often follow integration efforts. We assert that viewing acquisition integration through the lens of contextual ambidexterity may improve acquisition outcomes in two ways: by providing an integrate...

This chapter aims to explore In-Depth the relationship between the venture capitalist and the venturebacked company and account for how this relationship unfolds over time. To achieve this, the authors present evidence from three process case studies. The field study presented in this chapter is partly retrospective and partly in real time and is b...

The intergenerational transition or succession process is a well-researched topic in the family business literature. Yet, despite the numerous studies addressing this complex process, family business scholars have recently critiqued the research results obtained thus far (Sharma, Chrisman and Gersick, 2012). Specifically, some argue that the proble...

Family businesses constitute the key infrastructure of wealth creation across the globe. One of the most important human-resource challenges they face is intergenerational transition, an issue that has received considerable attention from scholars in various countries. Despite this great interest, academics are still attempting to understand the ph...

In this chapter, we want to draw merger and acquisition scholars' attention to the variety of settings investigated under the generic label "M&As". We seek to answer the following question: "What are the study objects that mergers and acquisitions scholars actually investigate and refer to with the generic label 'M&As'?" We will achieve this aim by...

In this chapter, we want to draw merger and acquisition scholars’ attention to the variety of settings investigated under the generic label ‘‘M&As’’. We seek to answer the following question: ‘‘What are the study objects that mergers and acquisitions scholars actually investigate and refer to with the generic label ‘M&As’?’’ We will achieve this ai...

This paper seeks to further the understanding of the variety of meanings M&A scholars attach to the label “M&A performance” by providing an alternative way to interpret the claimed inconsistency of M&A research findings. While many scholars contend that the problem stems from the multiplicity of M&A performance measures, we believe the problem rest...

IntroductionThe Integration Process: A Closer LookMeasuring M&A PerformanceSummary and Conclusions Discussion QuestionsAbout the Authors

Mergers and acquisitions (henceforth M&As) have long attracted interest from academics. Yet, despite all the research, we do not seem to know much about M&A outcomes. Reasons for this state of affairs are frequently attributed to the fragmentation and existence of substantive gaps in current M&A literature, and the need for integrative frameworks t...

What is the academic community's contribution to the understanding of merger and acquisition (M&A) performance to date? Although there exists already a vast amount of theoretical as well as empirical studies aiming at explaining, predicting or understanding post-acquisition performance, there seems to be a growing dissatisfaction among scholars wit...

Mergers and acquisitions (henceforth M&As) have been studied from different disciplines from the ‘60s to date. Findings from these different areas, however, lack theoretical integration and scholars often express dissatisfaction with the fragmented findings. This note will address some of these concerns bringing scholars’ attention to methodologica...

This chapter intends to investigate the role of strategic mergers and acquisitions (hereinafter M&As), traditionally viewed as a corporate strategy option, in sustaining competitive strategy, offering a description of the whole acquisition process and discussing the main and conflicting results produced by the abundant empirical research on this to...

Acquisitions are an effective tool to implement deliberate corporate strategy or the unique occasion to shift towards an emergent one. They can either allow a firm, to adjust its products-markets portfolio, at a speed not achievable through internal development, either provide the ability to gain all the benefits from pooling assets and sharing cap...