Stakeholder and merger and acquisition research: A structured literature review

This paper reviews literature that links stakeholders and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to develop insights into how such research is developing, critique the research, and outline future research opportunities, not least in accounting and finance. Using a structured literature review (SLR) approach, we find such research is expanding in investigating diverse stakeholders and in analytic approaches, research methods and disciplines. With a shareholder focus, accounting and finance publications still largely ignore non‐shareholder stakeholders in researching M&A. The literature is dominated by a unidirectional analysis that primarily considers the effect M&A has on stakeholders, falls short in investigating inter‐ and intra‐stakeholder relationships and in eliciting the complex web of relationships between an M&A process and stakeholders.