Abstract

Since the early 2000s there has been an increased focus on methods in studies of mergers and acquisitions. In 2009, a symposium on qualitative methods in merger and acquisition studies was held at the Academy of Management conference. In 2012, Susan Cartwright, Satu Teerikangas, Audrey Rouzies, and Elizabeth Wilson-Evered edited a special issue of Scandinavian Journal of Management with a focus on method in what they called inter-organizational encounters (Cartwright et al. 2012), and in 2010 Meglio and I (Meglio and Risberg 2010) called for a wider use of qualitative and longitudinal methods in the study of mergers and acquisitions.