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併購與策略聯盟在公司理財文獻之回顧與展望：亞洲市場之研究
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Review of M&A and Joint Ventures in the Field of Corporate
Finance: Asia as the Case Study
1. Introduction
A firm needs to engage in various corporate investments in order to grow and ensure
sustainable operations. Internal (i.e., innovation investment or capital investment) as well as
external growth activities (i.e., M&A, equity-based alliances such as joint ventures, and non-
equity-based alliances) are important approaches for a company to achieve growth. When
internal growth opportunities are limited, firms then turn to external growth methods to
achieve their growth objective (King et al., 2004; Slywotzky and Wise, 2002). This study
focuses on external growth strategies by revisiting literature that sampled data from the
Asian market and were published in TSSCI or A Tier SSCI financial journals from 2000 to
2015. The research related to M&A, joint ventures and strategic alliances were then
categorized into two topics: M&A and strategic alliances.
This paper is organized as follows. A review of M&A is provided in Section 2. Section
3 offers a review of strategic alliances. The directions of future research regarding M&A and
alliance are discussed at the end of Sections 2 and 3. Finally, conclusions are presented in
Section 4.
2. Review of Mergers and Acquisitions
M&A is an important external growth method for a firm to achieve objectives such as:
synergy, resource acquisition, diversification, vertical/horizantial integration, globalization
and managers’ self-interest. Extant research has applied various theories to discuss M&A-
related topics according to different levels as follows:
1. Individual level: At the individual level (e.g., deals or managers), scholars apply the
perspective of synergy overconfidence, network and agency theory.
2. Corporation level: At the corporation level (e.g., internal and external characteristics of a
firm, or corporate governance), scholars adopt the perspective of network/guanxi,
organizational learning or corporate governance and a resource-based view.
Ying-Jiuan Wong
, Associate Professor, Department of Business Administration, National Kaohsiung
University of Applied Sciences
Shao-Chi Chang
, Professor, Institute of International Business, National Cheng Kung University