EFFECTS OF TRUST AND GOVERNANCE ON RELATIONAL RISK (original) (raw)

Strategic alliances - A marriage of convenience or a matter of trust?

2008

This paper examines how members of a strategic alliance (referred to as the Alliance) develop knowledge through networking relationships that may or may not contribute to competitive advantage. A 1994 survey of Alliance general managers revealed that the reasons they gave for joining were related to maintaining and improving competitiveness through sharing management know-how, training costs and programs, engaging in joint tendering and increasing market share (Fulop and Kelly, 1995). Ten years later, in 2004 and again in 2008, the authors revisited the Alliance in order to discover whether some of these objectives had been achieved, the forms of learning that may have occurred among partners, and the role that trust has played in the knowledge sharing processes.

Alliance Experience and Governance Flexibility

Organization Science, 2015

P rior work has mapped the transaction at the heart of an alliance to the risks of opportunism inherent in that alliance and, ultimately, to how the alliance is structured and governed. We extend this approach by noting that the parties in an alliance do not necessarily perceive the same hazards as predominant and thus may have different preferences for how the alliance is structured. Nevertheless, it is in each party's best interest to find a structure that protects its interests, while also allowing its partner to protect its interests sufficiently. Drawing from the alliance management capabilities literature, we argue that firms with more alliance experience are better able to protect their interests under any given alliance structure, making the choice of structure less consequential to them. The resulting governance versatility provides a competitive advantage by enabling firms to form advantageous alliances that are less available to inexperienced competitors. Our study of innovative alliances in biopharmaceutical industry lends support to the hypotheses, allowing us to advance the literature on governance choice in alliances, the literature on alliance management, and their intersection.

STRATEGIC ALLIANCES: FROM SUCCES TO FAILURE

2009

Over the past few years, the strategic alliances had been increasingly common. The term "strategic alliance" can mean many different things, but the commonly used meaning entails a joint corporative effort by two or more companies working towards agreed upon goals.

The role of third parties in strategic alliance governance

The role of third parties in effective alliance management, especially with regards to innovation, has been identified recently but is still underexplored in the alliance literature. Whereas existing alliance governance literature mainly focuses on the role of third parties in stimulating trust building, this chapter develops a comprehensive framework, illuminating how third parties can influence the initiation and application of structural and relational governance mechanisms. In so doing, it provides a basis for further research on the role of third parties roles in alliance governance and the effects thereof on relationship quality and outcome.

Interorganizational cooperation: a new view of strategic alliances

Industrial Marketing Management, 2002

Looking at the rate at which organizations/firms are entering into strategic alliances these days, one can understand and/or appreciate the increased research in the area of strategic alliances. The tremendous amount of research on this type of interorganizational cooperation, more or less, have one thing in common. Thus, all seek to increase our knowledge and/or understanding of the potentialities, as well as the challenges inherent in the formation of strategic alliances. What is missing in the existing literature on strategic alliances is an emphasis on the importance of the interacting parties' (i.e., parties in any strategic alliance) interconnected exchange relationships with third parties (i.e., actors who are not officially regarded as partners in an alliance). There is a lack of empirical studies on the nature of and the extent to which networks (third parties) may affect and be affected by the achievement of goals pursued by some focal strategic alliance partners. The paper presents case studies that shed light on this issue. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to deepen our understanding of the relevance of third parties in a strategic alliance formed between specific focal actors. One important conclusion of the study is that the achievement of the focal actors' goals is affected, in large, by third parties. D

Alliance management: a view from the past and a look to the future

Journal of Management studies, 1998

The literature on strategic alliances has focused mainly on issues related to alliance formation and the reasons why ®rms form these partnerships. Yet the large number of failures would suggest that there exists a gap between an understanding of alliance formation and the practice of alliance management. The purpose of this paper is to narrow that gap. We begin with a review of the extant state-ofknowledge and then discuss areas in which further insight can be gained. More speci®cally, the remainder of the paper focuses on issues related to managing alliances over time and the role of the alliance manager, a linch-pin in the alliance management process.

STRATEGIC INTERACTION IN ALLIANCES

This article studies strategic interactions between firms that form alliances to exploit synergistic benefits. Firms cooperate to create value, but they can also compete to capture value. Fundamental questions rarely addressed by strategy scholars relate to how the configuration of control over resources influences firms' strategies, the potential for termination, and the emergence of cooperation and trust. The formal results reveal crucial aspects of the interor-ganizational rent-generating process and yield testable implications. With greater synergistic benefits, firms invest more, but they also compete more intensively to capture more value. With symmetric control, more value gets created, which limits the potential for termination but also exacerbates the competition for value; from a relational perspective, this form of control augments the calculative rationale of cooperation and trust.

Alliance Management as a Source of Competitive Advantage

Journal of Management, 2002

We examine the management of strategic alliances using the theoretical frames of transactions cost, social network theory and the resource-based view. Alliances must be effectively managed for their benefits to be realized. Effective alliance management begins with selecting the right partner. Furthermore, alliances must be managed to build social capital and knowledge. To maximize cooperation among the partners, a trust-based relationship must be developed. Therefore, we conclude that managing alliances is crucial for firms to gain competitive advantage and create value with strategic alliances.