Understanding how organizations grow and change is a major topic of interest in industrial economics and strategic management literature. A simple but fundamental distinction in the nature of growth is whether firms grow internally, by relying on their resources to innovate and expand their activities, or externally, by acquiring other firms through mergers and acquisitions (M&A). While “combo deals”, acquisitions that represent a target price superior to $10 billion, always attract the attention of the public and the press, M&A activity is not the sole province of large companies. Small businesses are also very active in the M&A market (Grimpe and Hussinger 2008; Mawson and Brown 2016; Weitzel and McCarthy 2011). In Western Europe, and especially in France, the context of this study, the aging of the population creates an increase in the offer of smaller firms on the market for acquisition. While the study of M&A activities has generated substantial literature on large businesses, the case of small businesses has been somehow overlooked. Specifically, the question of a performance effect of acquisitions initiated by small businesses remains relatively unexplored.
Numerous theoretical approaches have been proposed as explanations of the M&A process. One of the oldest may be Schumpeter’s (1942) well known “creative destruction” evolutionary analysis. According to this view, new forms of industrial organizations emerge as firms react to the apparition of new business opportunities by adapting their organizational structure…