Research gap statement formulation: an example on corporate merger and acquisition

Research gap statement formulation: an example on corporate merger and acquisition. This note is especially useful to my MBA students using my agile literature review approach (the academic-oriented project type):

Article 1: Kar, R,M., Bhasin, N. and Soni, A. 2021. "Role of mergers and acquisitions on corporate performance: emerging perspectives from Indian IT sector" TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS REVIEW VOL. 13, NO. 3, : Routledge: 307–320.

“Evaluating the performance of enterprises involved in M&As has been the subject of a great deal of research as 47879 mergers and acquisition (M&A) deals totalling over US $5000 billion announced in 2017 from a meagre number of transactions totalling 2675 deals worth of US $347 billion in 1985 (Institute of Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances (IMAA), 2017). This manifold increase in M&As are attributed to multiple reasons, motives, economic forces and institutional factors that can be taken together or in isolation, which influence corporate decisions to engage in M&As (Khemani, 1990). It seems reasonable to assume that, even if this is not always the case, the ultimate concern of corporate managers who make acquisitions, regardless of their motives at the outset, is to increase long-term profit. However, this is affected by so many other factors that it can become very difficult to make isolated statistical measurements of the impact of M&As on profit (Kar, Soni, & Singh, 2014)”.

The research gap statement 1: the academic literature recognizes the difficulty to make isolated statistical measurements of the impact of M&As on profit.

Article 2: Chun, R. and Davies, G. 2010. "The effect of merger on employee views of corporate reputation: Time and space dependent theory" Industrial Marketing Management 39, Elsevier: 721–727.

"While there is considerable research into customer loyalty and retention, insights into the internal causes of customer disaffection, particularly in a B2B context, are rare. One source of employee disaffection and turnover is a major organisational change such as a merger or acquisition.. ". 

The research gap statement 2: the academic literature has neglected to study the internal causes of customer disaffection, such as corporate merger and acquisition, in the B2B context.

Article 3: Tobias Hertel, T., Kaya, D. and Reichmann, D. 2024. "Corporate culture and M&A deals: Using text from crowdsourced employer reviews to measure cultural differences" Journal of Banking and Finance 161, Elsevier 107118.

"Cultural differences between acquirer-target pairs constitute key success factors of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Consider, for instance, when Amazon acquired Whole Foods in 2017, some analysts immediately raised concerns that the firms’ cultures could clash.1 This notion is consistent with the cultural adversity hypothesis, suggesting that cultural differences tend to undermine coordination, and thus pose an obstacle to M&A success (e.g., Buono et al., 1985; Denison and Mishra, 1995). Other scholars, however, suggest that the relationship is more complex, because culturally diverse firms benefit from a broader range of perspectives and enhanced problem solving, consistent with the information processing hypothesis (e.g., Cox, 1991; Reus and Lamont, 2009; Watson et al., 1993). Yet, empirical evidence on the relationship between corporate culture and M&A outcomes is still scarce (Renneboog and Vansteenkiste, 2019)”.

The research gap statement 3: the academic literature has neglected to conduct empirical study on the relationship between corporate culture and M&A outcomes.