This paper is organized into three major parts. The first part deals with mergers and acquisitions as an activity. Several major issues are reviewed (1) Why mergers take place? (2) Are mergers successful? (3) What is the key to the success of mergers and acquisitions in future? In the second part, some important elements of the "organization misfit" would be identified and appropriate management response suggested for dealing with them. In the third part of this paper the pre-merger decision making process and post merger integration process will be discussed and effort will be made to identify steps to make the process more effective.

Editor's Note: this is a fairly long article that was written sometime in the late 80's so some aspects are dated and the writing itself is of uneven quality, but there are some good sections worth checking out...