Reaching beyond the acquirer-target dyad in M&A – Linkages to external knowledge sources and target firm valuation
研究并购中目标企业嵌入本地知识流的程度如何影响收购价格，发现高度嵌入的目标企业收购价更高，且这种效应受双方知识基础与本地知识关联度的调节。
Access to unique knowledge of a target firm is the strategic rationale for many firm acquisitions with the expectation of improving the acquirer's innovation performance. We argue that the acquisition price reflects opportunities for value creation through innovation and investigate whether acquirers pay not just for the target firm's knowledge but also for the opportunity to access localized knowledge when targets are embedded in the knowledge flows of their region. Accordingly, we integrate embeddedness theory with literature on the expectations for knowledge-based value creation in M&A. We hypothesize that target firms that are highly embedded in local knowledge flows have higher acquisition prices. Using data on 520 technology-oriented firm acquisitions in Europe between 2001 and 2010, we find that the acquisition price increases with the target firm's local embeddedness. The effects are weaker when an acquirer's knowledge base is closely related to the localized knowledge and stronger when the target's knowledge base is closely related to the localized knowledge, suggesting that local embeddedness conditions the ability of acquirer and target to absorb localized knowledge.