Understanding the Antecedents of Collateral Learning in New Product Alliances

Recognizing that strategic alliances represents important means for developing knowledge in critical arenas, such as new product development, the authors advance the notion of collateral learning that assess knowledge acquisition internal to a firm in the alliance. To examine its antecedents, the authors build on the behavioral theory of the firm and propose that strategic importance and performance vulnerability as the motivational components and organizational similarity and alliance experience as the awareness components advocated in the theory. Results from 133 alliance firms suggest that both of the motivational and awareness components are equally important in influencing collateral learning in new product alliances. Specifically, to develop collateral learning, firms should have extensive alliance experience and acknowledged stake in their alliance partners. The results also support the theorized U-shaped relationship between organizational similarity of the alliance partners and collateral learning. Thus, collateral learning is facilitated when organizations are either similar or dissimilar, while medium levels of organizational similarity facilitate collateral learning to a relatively lower extent. Although performance vulnerability is found to be associated negatively with collateral learning, extensive alliance experience can attenuate such a negative effect.