Knowledge Acquisition in the Global Strategic Alliance Network

Abstract

This paper aims to empirically examine how shipping companies can effectively acquire knowledge from their strategic alliance partners. This paper adopts cooperative network embeddedness mechanism, such as network density and tie closeness, as a channel through which to acquire more knowledge for shipping participants within a strategic alliance network. This study also examines the moderating role of competition between alliance partners in reinforcing the effectiveness of the cooperative relationships on the knowledge acquisition. Based on the literature, hypotheses to predict the aforementioned associations between cooperative network embeddedness and knowledge acquisition and the moderating role of competition in facilitating that association are established. A quantitative research method using survey data conducted in the Korean shipping industry was employed in order to empirically test the presented hypotheses. The results show that if players in a shipping alliance network are embedded in a dense network and have close relationships with their alliance partners, this helps to facilitate a greater degree of knowledge acquisition from the partners; and the impact of network density on the knowledge acquisition would be intensified with the higher level of competition between shipping companies.