Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) represent a substantial means to implement corporate and business unit strategy. However, capturing expected value proves to be very challenging. While previous studies on acquisition decision-making have identified a number of impediments to process, they lack a rich and theoretically grounded description of how to systematically mitigate those obstacles. Our research setting is four firms from the German industry sector. Using a multi-case inductive study, we analyze how serial strategic acquirers—all equipped with a dedicated M&A function—have designed their M&A decision-making process. We find that firms rely on group decision-making mechanisms, following three procedural strategies and one governance strategy.

并购（M&A）是实施公司和业务部门战略的重要手段。然而，事实证明，获得预期价值非常具有挑战性。虽然之前关于收购决策的研究已经确定了处理过程中的许多障碍，但它们缺乏关于如何系统地减轻这些障碍的丰富且有理论依据的描述。我们的研究背景是来自德国工业部门的四家公司。通过多案例归纳研究，我们分析了系列战略收购者（均配备专门的并购职能）如何设计其并购决策流程。我们发现企业依赖群体决策机制，遵循三种程序策略和一种治理策略。