C. Porsgaard et al. / Journal of International Management 00 (2017) 000–000 3 build on the accustomed operations management elements as defined by Russel & Taylor, 2011. Furthermore, as financial, legal, and commercial aspects of a due diligence is out of scope for an operational due diligence, these aspects are also excluded. Though some degree of inclusion is unavoidable. This paper focuses on firms that produce physical goods, have a global or European footprint, and are privately held. Governmental and nonprofit organizations, and firms operating in the service sector, are therefore out of scope. This paper is structured in nine main sections. Following the introduction, the second section clarifies two terms which are important to the understanding of the paper, namely mergers and acquisitions, and due diligence. The third section outlines the applied methodology. The fourth and fifth section constitute the literature review and the empirical interview findings. These sections are addressing research question 1. Section six, then presents the survey findings related to research question 2. The seventh section synthesizes the literature and empirical findings into a framework. The research and findings are subsequently discussed in section eight. Section nine concludes on the papers findings, key challenges and suggestions for further research.
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