In this paper we develop the concept of relational quality as a proxy for relational trust. Exploration of data from 67 alliances confirms that relational quality is composed of three elements: initial conditions, partner interactions, and external events. We offer propositions on the relative importance these elements take depending on the different roles relational trust may play in strategic...

In this paper, I examine the impact of partner technological diversity and alliance organizational form on firm innovative performance. Using a sample of 463 R&D alliances in the telecommunications equipment industry, I find that alliances contribute far more to firm innovation when technological diversity is moderate, rather than low or high. Although this relationship holds irrespective of al...

Managing organizational knowledge in alliances implies establishing the best possible strategic design to create, acquire, maintain, transfer, and apply organizational knowledge developed between the partners (or acquired from partners) in order to achieve competitive goals. In this paper, the role of knowledge management strategy (KMS) in strategic alliances is analyzed in a technology-intensi...

Executive Overview Alliances present a paradox for firms. On the one hand, firms engage in a large number of alliances to secure and extend their competitive advantage and growth; on the other hand, their alliances exhibit surprisingly low success rates. In this paper, we discuss how firms can address these failures by identifying some of the primary drivers of alliance success. First, we discu...

Organizations today make radical use of the IT resources to sustain or better their existing competitive position. One such initiative is forming alliances on a shared IT backbone with partners of their value chain. We term these alliances the collaborative organizational structures (COS). Regardless of the nature of engagement with IT resources, organizations will require unique competencies t...

Cop Biotechnology is a rapidly expanding field of science that has led to the formation of a large number of companies that together form a significant sector within the Australian economy. Even though there has been considerable growth in the Australian biotechnology sector as a whole, a large percentage of Australian biotechnology firms are small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that suffe...

We develop an agent-based model to reproduce the size distribution of R&D alliances of firms. Agents are uniformly selected to initiate an alliance and to invite collaboration partners. These decide about acceptance based on an individual threshold that is compared with the utility expected from joining the current alliance. The benefit of alliances results from the fitness of the agents involv...

I alliances are widely recognized as critical to product innovation, particularly in hightechnology markets. Many new product development (NPD) alliances tend to be asymmetric, that is, they are formed between a larger firm and a smaller firm. As is the case with alliances in general, asymmetric alliances also typically result in changes in the shareholder values of the partner firms. Are the c...