This paper demonstrates the existence of bidirectional relationships between interfirm collaboration and business sales. Controlling for factors that influence whether firms form collaborative relationships, the analysis shows that entry and post-entry collaboration often contribute to superior performance, which in turn attracts more partners. However, the performance influences vary across types of collaborators and collaborations, with differences among entrant and incumbent partners, between marketing and R&D partnerships, by partner size, and across time. The empirical analysis examines businesses that operated in the U.S. hospital software systems industry between 1961 and 1991. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Interfirm collaboration and firm performance have a complex relationship, each affecting the other. Economics, organization, and strategy research argue that businesses often benefit from collaborative relationships (e.g., Burt, 1983; Coase, 1937; Dyer and Singh, 1998; Williamson, 1975, 1991), while recent empirical studies have identified some of the conditions under which collaborations are or are not beneficial (Baum, Calabrese, and Silverman, 2000; Khanna, Gulati, and Nohria, 1998; Singh, 1997; Singh and Mitchell, 1996). Nonetheless, the systematic nature of the relationship between collaboration and performance—in particular, for our discussion in this study, sales performance—is not clear. Several studies identify relationships between collaboration and greater sales, but do not establish whether greater business sales induce collaborative relationships or

Interfirm collaboration among knowledge intensive firms is increasing as a result of accelerating competition, falling regulatory barriers, and rising customer expectations. Resource dependency theory is used to position knowledge as the key resource for the knowledge-based enterprise (KBE) and to examine the suitability of alliances as a mode of knowledge acquisition and exchange, contrasted particularly with merger and acquisition. The alliance and knowledge literatures are reviewed and particular attention is paid to the critical alliance formation stage. This stage is reviewed against a research model that posits firm performance in knowledge creation arises from a number of factors, including the motivation for an alliance, partner firm characteristics (the ability to develop and sustain valuable resources; absorptive capacity; combinative capability; experience with alliances; and appropriate design for knowledge exchange), the development of operating structures and norms, and the choice of alliance structure. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research.

The dynamic capabilities literature suggests that firms need to use both internal development and external sourcing to thrive over time, but we have a limited understanding of the conditions that best suit different sourcing choices. This study examines how constraints that arise from firms ’ existing stocks of capabilities and from their internal social contexts shape their choices of capability-sourcing modes and, in turn, their ability to obtain new capabilities. Thus, the research focuses on an underemphasized form of dynamic capability: the ability to select appropriate modes of capability sourcing. We test the arguments with a survey and longitudinal survival study of the international telecommunications industry. We find intriguing variations in the way that firms ’ selection capability influences their ability to renew their capabilities and, ultimately, to survive. Key words: modes of capability acquisition; selection capability; resource gap; institutional gap; internal development; external sourcing History: Published online in Articles in Advance April 7, 2008. Recent arguments in the dynamic capabilities literature suggest that firms need to develop skills in both internal development and external sourcing to be able to renew their capabilities and thrive over time (Helfat

abstract Acquisition of capabilities is both imperative and difficult in emerging economies. This study adopts a duel network perspective to examine how the source networks and recipient networks in which international joint venture (IJV) partners operate influence inter-organizational transfer and diffusion of capabilities. We study multiple cases in the Chinese automotive industry to investigate how various factors of MNE source networks and the local recipient networks (business groups in China or qiye jituan) affect knowledge transfer from the MNE source networks into IJVs and knowledge diffusion from IJVs to their local recipient networks. The study suggests ways that the dual networks influence both types of knowledge transfer. We found both positive and negative effects of recipient and source networks on knowledge inflow to the IJVs and knowledge outflow from IJVs. The dual networks perspective is particularly relevant for emerging economies where the asymmetry between the knowledge, power and motivations of the recipient and source networks may significantly affect the knowledge transfer outcome.

doi 10.1287/mnsc.1060.0630

Recent research shows that preexisting network structure constrains the formation of new interorganizational alliances. Firms that are poorly embedded in a network structure are less likely than richly embedded firms to form alliances, because they lack informational and reputational benefits. This study examines the types of ties that poorly embedded firms can form to overcome the constraints that their structural positions impose, in turn helping to explain how firms ’ actions can transform existing network structures. We argue that poorly embedded firms are more likely to participate in ties characterized by social asymmetry than in ties characterized by structural homophily. We analyze the terms of trade that socially asymmetric partners negotiate for alliance governance and discuss how such alliances influence network dynamics. To test our arguments, we use longitudinal data on the alliance activities of 97 global chemical firms from

Acquisition research has traditionally been dominated by economic and atomistic assumptions. This study extends acquisition research by integrating behavioral learning and social network perspectives to examine the acquisitions of alliance partners. Specifically, we examine, at the dyadic level, how firms ’ alliance learning approaches (exploration versus exploitation) and their joint and relative embeddedness in alliance networks (joint brokerage positions and relative centrality) can interact to drive subsequent acquisitions of alliance partners. Our analyses of the U.S. computer industry support our theoretical framework, highlighting the unique and previously underexplored behavioral and relational drivers of acquisitions. Alliances and acquisitions are two important organizational activities for accessing external resources (Wang & Zajac, 2007). Although the literature generally treats them as parallel in nature, firms often acquire alliance partners (Folta & Miller, 2002; Porrini, 2004; Zollo & Reuer, 2010). Then, what drives acquisitions of alliance partners? Prior research has primarily relied on economic or financial explanations such as transaction costs, agency conflicts, and real options (Folta & Miller, 2002; Hagedoorn & Sadowski, 1999; Kogut, 1991), and paid relatively little attention to behavioral and network drivers. A stream of recent work has increasingly recognized that firms often draw on behavioral learning to make acquisition decisions

In this paper, we propose that a firm's capacity to control the transfer of resources in alliances is driven by two essential abilities: a learning ability and a protection ability. To explain learning in alliances, previous research has focused on a wide range of rather diverse factors, such as the firm's alliance experience, its knowledge base, its intent to learn, the alliance content and governance, or the tacitness and embeddedness of the targeted resource, among others. We argue that many of these factors overlap and that a shift to the micro-level of analysis is necessary to realize that they are components of one or both abilities. Focusing on these abilities suggests the existence of a series of other factors that have been ignored in the literature to date. In particular, the model we develop hypothesizes that the interface between the firm and the alliance, as well as the individuals involved in the partnership, have a significant influence on both the learning and leakage that takes place. The micro-level components we identify are either specific to the firm (interface, experience, and intent) or specific to each alliance (alliance characteristics, personnel characteristics, and governance structure). The empirical setting consists of a database of internet alliances, collected through a web-based questionnaire. We find support for the learning and protection abilities. These abilities, in turn, significantly explain the actual transfer of resources in alliances. 2 One of the main motivations for companies to form inter-firm alliances is learning, that is, the integration of a resource, of a routine, or more generally, of knowledge, into a firm. To explain learning in alliances, most research has used firm-level concepts, among which we can cite the absor...

Our study addresses two main questions: First, what types of alliances do firms tend to create when combining different kinds of resources? Second, what governance mechanisms do firms set up to coordinate and protect resources when they use them for different alliances? We examine 227 alliances between competitors in Asia, North America, and Europe. We first identify two types of alliances: scale alliances in which the partner firms contribute similar resources, and link alliances in which the partners contribute complementary resources. We find that firms contributing R&D and production resources tend to form scale alliances, while firms contributing marketing resources tend to enter into link alliances. We also find that firms are more likely to choose stronger protection mechanisms for link alliances, which create greater appropriation risks, while they tend to seek higher levels of coordination in scale alliances.

This study investigates how participating in strategic alliances with rivals affects the relative competitive positions of the partner firms. The paper builds on studies that show significant differences in the outcomes of scale and link alliances. The study argues that the more asymmetric outcomes of link alliances translate into greater changes in the relative market shares of the partner firms, due to unbalanced opportunities for inter-partner learning and learning by doing. We find support for this argument by examining 135 alliances among competing firms in the