Strategic alliances process and performancea meta-analytic study

Resumen

Determinants of strategic alliances success remain the focus of researchers’ interest as much today as they did thirty yeas ago. Despite extensive research, current understanding of a number of questions remains unclear. One problem is the lack of attention to how governance – i.e. coordination, control/monitoring, motivation/ incentives – occurs through formal and informal activities unfolding between partners as the alliance moves forward. To deepen the understanding of this question it is necessary to develop such a conceptual framework for collaborative process, elements of which could be analyzed with respect to their capacity to facilitate governance. This topic was developed in the third chapter. To develop such a framework we relied on the description of formal and informal alliance processes from the relational perspective, and on the conceptualization of the developmental stages of practice from the community of practice perspective. We described the domains of activities (stages) in which partners engage while performing their tasks. Furthermore, we assigned the process characteristics frequently employed in the alliance research to one of these domains and developed hypotheses about the relationships between these characteristics. Lastly, we discuss the governance functions of distinct activity domains. Another problem that has not yet been completely understood is the role of alliance social structure characteristics in the alliance success. Divergent empirical findings with respect to the influence of national cultural distance and prior mutual alliance experience – the two most widely studied characteristics of alliance social structure – on alliance performance continue to puzzle researchers. To advance the understanding of this question it is useful to look at how these characteristics affect the ability of partners to establish relationships conducive (or not) to alliance success. This issue has been addressed in the forth chapter. We relied on the institutional logics and the social exchange perspectives to derive hypotheses about the role of the developmental characteristics of interpartner relationships in transmitting the effect of social structure on performance. The hypothesized relationships have been meta-analytically explored. Furthermore, the role of the varying measurement of the constructs among other possible moderating conditions has also been considered. Yet another underexplored question is related to the role of prior experience on alliance success. Empirical findings on this question were conflicting. Furthermore, previous research did not distinguish systematically whether different types of prior experience affect alliance performance, learning, and partners´ ability to build high quality relationships conducive to alliance success differently. These problems have been dealt with in the fifth chapter. We performed a meta-analysis in order to resolve these questions. Overall, the aim of this dissertation was to advance the research on and facilitate the practice of the governance of strategic alliances. Systematic quantitative analysis of empirical findings from individual studies allowed for better estimates of true population correlations and establishing the extent of the generalizability of the current empirical results. It helped to analyze the current state of research objectively and suggest how it can regain force by identifying useful directions for further research. The broad theory-based frameworks that have been proposed unified fragmented theoretical and empirical contributions, and therefore this analysis will help to understand the high-level implications of the accumulated body of research better. The research conducted in this dissertation will also be useful to practitioners by rendering elements of informal relational governance more comprehensible, and by suggesting which areas of alliances process and performance can be affected by social structural characteristics as well as by suggesting how different types of prior experience contribute to an alliance.