Last week the Wall Street Journal announced the news that Dell was looking to hire an M&A chief.

Now that’s scary. It’s one thing for companies to come across what they believe is a strategic opportunity and make a play for another organization. It’s quite another to pursue acquisitions as a growth strategy, which apparently the masters-of-the-universe investment analysts are pressuring Dell to do. According to the Journal, “Wall Street has been calling for Dell to spend some of its $9 billion in cash to buy its way into other businesses.”

I have just one question: Why? If Dell can’t achieve healthy, profitable growth via its core operations (see General Dell and Dell Revamping posts), why would any wise investor be fooled by tacked-on revenues?

I make the case in When Growth Stalls that acquisitions are often a form of denial; management of a struggling company convinces itself that everything is OK as long as the top line is growing. That may be understandable thinking on the inside, given the daily pressure company leaders face to outperform the previous quarter. But dispassionate external observers should know better.

Interestingly, one column away from the Dell piece was a story about the latest results of a merger that analysts also once thought was smart. The headline: “Alcatel Loss Widens as Sales Fall.” As I documented in the book, the Alcatel-Lucent merger was a longshot from the start. According to the report, the company is still struggling with “increased competition, tough regulatory pressure and the impact of the economic crunch.” That’s a market tectonics triple play, and it’s going to keep Alcatel from being scored as a success for some time–if at all.

Dell’s $9 billion war chest is a powerful asset, but it should be used to reward investors–through dividends, share buybacks, or innovation focused on organic growth. It’s always better to build the team than to buy it.