An ecosystem perspective of acquisition outcomes: a research agenda

An almost exclusive focus on financial value has provided a biased and incomplete view of acquisition outcomes. We remedy this by challenging the assumption that acquisitions should primarily serve an acquiring firm’s shareholders, as other actors need to be considered. Specifically, we propose acquisition research should also consider outcomes for additional actors, or subjective and dynamic perceptions of non-financial value. To do this, we introduce the idea of acquisitions as embedded in an ecosystem, and propose the term acquisition ecosystem. We disentangle a multitude of outcomes in acquisition research and how they can be affected by acquisitions. Through our analysis, we provide novel and complementary perspectives to the dominating financial value outlook in acquisition research to inspire additional study.