Beschrijving

Increasingly, strategic alliances have become a cornerstone of many firms’ competitive strategy. More and more firms are using strategic alliances as a means to, for instance enter new markets, share development costs, increase their marketing reach, and provide complete solutions to the customer. Many firms have come to appreciate the specific benefits of strategic alliances. Surprisingly however, performance differences among firms, in terms of the success of strategic alliances, are notable: while some firms seem to be very effective in undertaking alliances, others seem to suffer from very high failure rates. The aim of this study is threefold. First, we wish to extend the current understanding of the process underlying alliance capability development. Therefore, we will describe a model in which the concepts of experience, learning mechanisms, routines and capabilities are linked. By linking these concepts, we hope to enhance our understanding of the underlying process of experience leveraging and the creation of alliance capabilities. Second, we will empirically test how capabilities influence alliance performance. To realize this, we analyse the relationships between alliance experience, capabilities and performance. Third, as a consequence of the two former goals, we aim to provide insights into critical concepts that benefit firms’ efforts in developing their alliance capabilities through which they can potentially improve their alliance performance. This study is divided into two parts. First, we describe a model for alliance capability development. Second, we empirically analyse the hypotheses that are derived in the first part. The results should provide us with a better understanding of the building blocks of alliance capabilities and the interactions between alliance experience and performance.