Duarte, Miguel MunozKaden, Alexander2017-10-132018-01-202017-01-20http://hdl.handle.net/10362/24140This study draws on a sample of 108 private and publicly listed German companies that completed at least one M&A deal in 2007-2015. Thereby it investigates the difference between the degree of family and institutional ownership and its respective influence on corporate strategic investment decisions, specifically focusing on merger and acquisition (M&A) investments. Furthermore, based on previous research, revealing similar innovative characteristics and benefits of corporate entrepreneurship and M&As, this study investigates how corporate entrepreneurship moderates the aforementioned relationships respectively. Thereby the study strives to ascertain whether both corporate entrepreneurship and M&As are either mutually exclusive or co-existing in corporations. Eventually, the results suggest no significant relationship between family ownership and the degree of M&A investments. Additional investigations further reveal that a family’s supplementary involvement in the corporate management board neither constitutes a significant negative moderation. In other words, this means that the relationship is not negatively amplified when family members have a majority ownership stake in the company while simultaneously operating in the corporate management board likewise. Contrary to the generally assumed paradigm of institutional investors’ passive behavior in strategic decision matters, their increasing ownership stakes negatively influence the degree of M&A investments. Furthermore, corporate entrepreneurship, measured in terms of R&D intensity and patents, reveals incoherent but significant findings and thereby illustrates its widespread influencing components in different corporate settings. In particular, R&D intensity negatively moderates the relationship between family ownership and M&A investments but constitutes no significant moderation on the relationship with institutional ownership. Patents, however, moderate the relationship with family ownership positively, while having a negative moderating effect on the relationship between institutional ownership and the degree of M&A investments.engFamily ownershipInstitutional ownershipMerger & acquisitionCorporate entrepreneurshipPatentsFamily managementResearch & developmentmaster thesis201716704