I completed two research assessments over academic articles related to M&A. The first article I looked into discussed how M&A activity has evolved over the past few decades, such as how there has been an increased focus on psychological and organizational culture factors involved in M&A deals. However, the article was published in 2006 so it may have been a little outdated, but it was still interesting to learn about how M&A practices have subtly changed through time. While reading this article, I came across some familiar concepts that I have learned over the course of this year, which goes to show how much I have grown through ISM.
The next article I looked into discussed the performance of M&A deals and how certain things like customer retention, quality of post-merger integration, and synergy realization can influence this performance. Both of the articles were very informative and I thought they were interesting.
I was also able to get on a call with my mentor and discuss my final product proposal. This allowed me to get a better picture of how I am going to proceed with my work.