Path-related empirical research on M&A-outcome: review and research agenda

This article attempts to reflect the current state and progress of contemporary research on financial and non-financial M&A outcome. Based on a review of 183 empirical M&A studies an integrative framework is developed, in which impact factors are classified into four major dimensions to explore the impact on M&A outcome: antecedents, transaction content characteristics, transaction process characteristics, and the transaction itself. The review reveals that M&A research is dominated by studies focusing on state variables at the expense of path-related variables. The review also shows that, to date, neither state-related research nor path-related research on financial and non-financial M&A outcome categories have reached maturity. Although there is still room for clarifying the impact of various state-related variables, the most valuable new insights are expected to emerge from researching path-related variables. Building on these insights, an extensive future research agenda is presented, which focuses on path-related research questions and methodological issues.