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The purpose of this article is to understand synergies in merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions.

Provides excerpts from the forthcoming book Synergies: The Art and Science of Making 2+2=5 by Bill Pursche.

The six most common mistakes that acquiring executives make are: defining synergies too narrowly or broadly; missing the window of opportunity; incorrect or insufficient use of incentives; not having the right people involved in synergy capture; mismatch between culture and systems; and using the wrong process.

This paper is a new approach to capturing the value of synergies in M&A, aimed at executives throughout the M&A process.

To illustrate the importance of speeded up merger integration process that creates value part of the M&A lifecycle.

This paper relies on recent case studies, client work and a survey.

Mergers that create maximum value treat the transaction as a complete lifecycle – beginning with pre‐deal strategy, progressing through deal execution and continuing with post‐merger integration. Most successful merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions are characterized by the superior execution of an explicit value‐capture strategy, which we call the “life‐cycle approach.” To achieve this, top managements in the most successful transactions have relied on four key principles: treat M&A as a holistic process; focus on value creation, not just integration; accelerate merger planning and execution; and use culture as a value‐creation tool.

Companies which already have an in‐built M&A capability, will adopt new best practices in merger integration that treat post‐merger integration earlier in the M&A process.

For companies who have an active M&A growth strategy, a speeded up merger integration allows for the early capture of M&A deal value.

Increasing chances of firm survival requires enduring entrepreneurship or the ability to balance competing demands for exploration and exploitation. We developed how acquisitions can provide needed disruption to change a firm’s dominant orientation toward exploration or exploitation or enable a continued focus on a firm’s dominant orientation. The result is a new typology for acquisition integration associated with different pre- and post-acquisition characteristics. For example, a firm with an exploitation orientation faces different integration challenges in acquiring targets with an exploration or exploitation orientation. We also distinguished between human and task integration to enable more nuanced integration decisions that help to reconcile conflicting findings on acquisition integration decisions. Implications for management research and practice were discussed.

Supply chain management (SCM) is explored from an operational perspective, following a threefold approach. The article introduces a set of management techniques and supporting tools that can be used to analyse and describe SCM strategies. It proposes a new normative tool and uses it to examine a large set of relevant SCM case studies pertaining to seven industries: apparel, automobile, grocery, white goods, pharmaceuticals, computers and book publishing. The article develops a new conceptual framework for SCM strategies and test it based on empirical evidence. The new schemes proposed here provide a normative tool to define and represent supply chain strategies, a contingency model to support managers in designing supply chain strategies, and some hints for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how a commonly‐overlooked resource – physical assets – can be used to advantage as both a tactical and strategic tool during mergers and acquisitions (M&A). It aims to present an overview of strategies for managers to consider when faced with M&A – both for deterring and defending against unwanted acquirer attention, and for managing M&A post‐transaction.

Integrating findings from different research streams (e.g. financial, management, geography and real estate), and drawing on interviews and recent M&A reports, the paper distills physical asset strategies into a general overview and a two‐stage framework.

Firms' physical assets can play a significant role in driving, defending and managing M&A. By affecting both financial and organizational outcomes, it is shown how physical assets are a powerful strategic resource within the manager's toolkit. Deter‐and‐defend strategies reduce M&A vulnerability and defend against hostile raiders; Managing M&A strategies improve post‐M&A revenue generation, efficiency gains and increased organizational effectiveness.

For managers facing M&A, this paper highlights a range of strategic options which are often overlooked in M&A research. Beyond M&A, many of these strategies can also be used by any firm facing financial and performance pressures.

The paper highlights a category of M&A strategies that can have a significant impact on M&A outcomes, but is often underplayed in general management and strategy research. It elaborates on a range of strategy options. Also, by integrating findings from diverse research streams, this paper offers a broadened perspective of M&A strategies.

This paper aims to present an innovative methodological framework developed out of primary research that will lead to new understanding about patterns in the strategic actions realised by firms within an industry. The framework is to be applied to increase understanding of how realised strategies evolved in the pharmaceutical industry and overcomes some of the limitations of other methods.

A qualitative approach was developed adapting techniques from text, thematic and content analysis to identify and categorise strategic actions realised by pharmaceutical firms (referred to as grand strategies). Strategic actions were not pre‐selected but allowed to emerge during the data collection process from public announcements by firms in the industry's main journal, Scrip. Building upon the work of Pearce and Robinson grand strategies can be understood as the packages of strategic actions that firms had planned and/or realised in order to achieve long‐term objectives.

A framework of realised strategic actions and grand strategies in the pharmaceutical industry was developed with 23 mutually exclusive categories. The paper shows how the framework can be used as an analytical tool to explore patterns in strategic action and grand strategy evolution, temporal patterns in strategy development and strategic action coevolution.

A limitation of the categorisation is that it is based on material collected from two years of empirical data from Scrip in order to develop the methodological framework. The framework was applied to data collected over an 11 year period in order to explore how the strategic actions of individual firms had evolved and co‐evolved. Data sources were limited to published sources.

The qualitative approach presented here offers a level of depth that has not been achieved by methodological approaches previously used to explore and compare patterns in realised strategic actions by firms operating in the pharmaceutical industry. The innovative approach contributes to management research in two key ways: providing a methodological framework that overcomes the limitations of previous studies into strategy evolution; and providing a systematic approach to data collection and analysis that can contribute to theory building with regard to strategy evolution.