MANAGEMT 7231 - Mergers & Acquisitions

Managers are confronted by a rapidly changing competitive landscape. Abrupt changes such as globalization, deregulation, technology advances change the nature and rules of the game. Firms are continuously attempting to remain competitive in this turbulent context, either fighting to defend their competitive advantage or seeking to create new ones. Major strategies employed for these ends include Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As).

These strategies can have major multi-level impacts. They affect how organizations compete or co-operate with the competition, how firms organize internally and how individual teams and executives achieve change. For these reasons M&As are important to examine.

The multi-level impact of these strategies, in terms of breadth, depth and complexity, lends their study to a multi-disciplinary rather than specialist approach. In this sense, the lens of strategic management is useful in providing coherence in approach, and in integrating other key disciplines such as finance, economics, organisational behaviour, psychology.