Antecedents and constituents of alliance management capability: the role of valuable alliance experience and governance mechanisms for learning

Abstract

We study the process of alliance management capability building, examining what type of alliance experience matters most for its development and the impact of suitable governance mechanisms. Having identified the constituent skills of alliance management capability, we argue that (1) only certain types of alliances can be considered valuable for generating and developing such firm-level capability, enabling firms to successfully manage interorganizational collaborations, and (2) specific governance mechanisms may help to leverage alliance management knowledge from previous partnerships. In our theoretical framework, only experience accruing from firm’s embedded alliances can generate the necessary constituent skills. Moreover, in order to affect the capability building process, such experience needs to be heterogeneous in terms of alliance contents, governance forms and partners. Finally, we assume a stronger effect of alliance experience when leveraged through the use of specific governance mechanisms. We conducted a single-case study analysis in order to test the theory in encounters with concrete experience.