Strategic Alliances and Corporate Social Capital*

Strategic alliances developed and propagated as formalized interorganizational relationships, particularly among firms in international business systems. These cooperative arrangements seek to achieve organizational objectives better through collaboration than through competition, but alliances also generate problems at several levels of analysis. Theory and research have likewise proliferated to explain various dimensions of alliance behavior. After presenting a typology of diverse governance forms, we review recent analyses of alliance formation, implementation management, performance outcomes and societal consequences of collaborative activities. Throughout we emphasize how alliance networks serve as corporate social capital to further both the individual and collective objectives of partners. We conclude with some speculations about future directions for theory construction and empirical research on strategic alliances.