The role of scientific collaboration in academic research has
rocketed across the natural and social sciences. While the causes,
consequences, and social interaction patterns of scientific
collaboration have been well-established, extant empirical work focuses
on entire disciplines. In this paper, we study patterns of
interdisciplinary scientific collaboration using the example of research
on mergers and acquisitions (M&A), a phenomenon which calls for
input from numerous disciplines. We base our findings on a social
network analysis of co-authorship practices in 687 co-authored papers
written by 1,158 authors, published in 30 leading journals and a book
series in the 1951–2014 period. We find that scientific collaboration
has increased in the M&A scholarly community since the 1990s, and
that one third of co-authorships are interdisciplinary. Collaboration is
however not equally spread, but led by a minority of active scholars
and certain disciplines. Recently, sub-groups of authors have become
mutually connected, pointing towards the emergence of an
interdisciplinary meta-level community. Our findings contribute to
appreciating interdisciplinary collaboration practices in academic
research and document the evolution of M&A research.