Mapping the future of cross-border mergers and acquisitions: a review and research agenda

Cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are considered one of the main strategies employed by firms to maintain a competitive edge and compete in the high-velocity global industry. This research field holds great promise as many facets are underexplored. Taking into consideration the growing interdisciplinary interest in M&A research, in this article, we performed content analysis in combination with the statistical procedure homogeneity analysis by means of alternating least squares (HOMALS) on 933 articles gathered from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The quantitative analysis of the intellectual structure of cross-border M&A field yielded the six topics of interest for future research: acquisition versus strategic alliance or joint venture, partial purchase, the outbound acquisitions from emerging-market firms, micro-multinationals, the human side of cross-border acquisitions that tie in with the upper echelons research and knowledge management and transfer, in specific, tacit knowledge.