This paper investigates the outcomes and durations of strategic alliances among competing firms, using alliance outcomes as indicators of learning by partner firms. We show that alliance outcomes vary systematically across link and scale alliances. Link alliances are interfirm partnerships to which partners contribute different capabilities, while scale alliances are partnerships to which partners contribute similar capabilities. We find that partners are more likely to reorganize or take over link alliances than scale alliances. By contrast, scale alliances are more likely to continue without material changes. The two types of alliances are equally likely to shut down, at similar ages. These results support the view that link alliances lead to greater levels of learning and capability acquisition between the partners than do scale alliances. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This study investigates the outcomes and durations of strategic alliances among competing firms, using alliance outcomes as indicators of learning by partner firms. We define strategic alliances as arrangements between two or more

doi 10.1287/mnsc.1070.0712

This paper demonstrates the existence of bidirectional relationships between interfirm collaboration and business sales. Controlling for factors that influence whether firms form collaborative relationships, the analysis shows that entry and post-entry collaboration often contribute to superior performance, which in turn attracts more partners. However, the performance influences vary across types of collaborators and collaborations, with differences among entrant and incumbent partners, between marketing and R&D partnerships, by partner size, and across time. The empirical analysis examines businesses that operated in the U.S. hospital software systems industry between 1961 and 1991. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Interfirm collaboration and firm performance have a complex relationship, each affecting the other. Economics, organization, and strategy research argue that businesses often benefit from collaborative relationships (e.g., Burt, 1983; Coase, 1937; Dyer and Singh, 1998; Williamson, 1975, 1991), while recent empirical studies have identified some of the conditions under which collaborations are or are not beneficial (Baum, Calabrese, and Silverman, 2000; Khanna, Gulati, and Nohria, 1998; Singh, 1997; Singh and Mitchell, 1996). Nonetheless, the systematic nature of the relationship between collaboration and performance—in particular, for our discussion in this study, sales performance—is not clear. Several studies identify relationships between collaboration and greater sales, but do not establish whether greater business sales induce collaborative relationships or

This paper aims at contributing to the research concerning alliance dynamics by combining elements from research considering motives for alliance formation and alliance outcomes. This paper draws on the resource-based view of the firm, suggesting that firms ’ competitive advantages derive from their preferential access to idiosyncratic resources, especially tacit knowledge-related (based) resources. However, by integrating the resource-based view into the network perspective, the main arguments focus on the relationship between conditions for alliance formation and outcomes and the impact of learning on the dynamic evolution of alliances. The paper breaks with the traditional assumption of complementarity of resources (or resource-bases) as a necessity for successful collaboration, and proposes a different and more dynamic approach to alliance formation in the pursuit of what seems to be the ultimate goal of strategic alliances: Synergy. Ultimately, this paper identifies two different types of knowledge networks: Complementary Knowledge Networks and Synergistic Knowledge Networks, which, depending on the initial motivation and conditions, will lead to different outcomes in terms of learning and knowledge creation for the partners. Keywords: Synergy, Resource-Based View, Strategic Alliance, Knowledge CreationResearch on strategic collaboration between firms has received increasing attention in the literature during the last decade, reflecting the increasing frequency and importance of strategic alliances in

Extending prior firm boundary research that tends to focus on economic explanations and rely on atomistic assumptions, we propose a multilevel framework by bridging the resource-based view and the social network perspective, with their respective emphases on the importance of firms ’ internal resource endowments and external resource opportunities. Specifically, we argue that firms ’ boundary choices can be better understood by considering the tension between the need for external resources and the need for risk controls, affected by internal and external resource factors at three important levels: firm characteristics, dyadic differences, and network attributes. We also explore firms ’ boundary choices under two conditions: whether to initiate external relationships (non-partnering vs. partnering) and whether to pursue either alliances or acquisitions if external relationships are needed. Our analyses of the United States computer industry over a nine-year span largely support our theoretical framework and demonstrate the importance of unique factors at and across individual, dyadic, and network levels in understanding firms ’ boundary choices. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Acquisition research has traditionally been dominated by economic and atomistic assumptions. This study extends acquisition research by integrating behavioral learning and social network perspectives to examine the acquisitions of alliance partners. Specifically, we examine, at the dyadic level, how firms ’ alliance learning approaches (exploration versus exploitation) and their joint and relative embeddedness in alliance networks (joint brokerage positions and relative centrality) can interact to drive subsequent acquisitions of alliance partners. Our analyses of the U.S. computer industry support our theoretical framework, highlighting the unique and previously underexplored behavioral and relational drivers of acquisitions. Alliances and acquisitions are two important organizational activities for accessing external resources (Wang & Zajac, 2007). Although the literature generally treats them as parallel in nature, firms often acquire alliance partners (Folta & Miller, 2002; Porrini, 2004; Zollo & Reuer, 2010). Then, what drives acquisitions of alliance partners? Prior research has primarily relied on economic or financial explanations such as transaction costs, agency conflicts, and real options (Folta & Miller, 2002; Hagedoorn & Sadowski, 1999; Kogut, 1991), and paid relatively little attention to behavioral and network drivers. A stream of recent work has increasingly recognized that firms often draw on behavioral learning to make acquisition decisions

Coevolution is an established research framework in the biological and evolutionary sciences, and though a new entrant to organization studies, it holds potential to transform the field (Lewin et al., 2003). Its fundamental premise is that entities or organizations evolve in relation to their environments while at the same time these environments evolve in relation to them. This paper argues that a coevolutionary approach is particularly well suited for research on organizations and the natural environment (O&NE), and that O&NE scholars may make significant contributions to organization theory from this perspective. However, this potential depends upon developing and maintaining a clear distinction between coevolution as a verb, or broad logic (a.k.a. macro coevolution), and coevolution as a noun, or specific mechanism (a.k.a. micro coevolution). In building these arguments the paper develops a definition and research framework for coevolutionary research and discusses theoretical and practical implications for O&NE.

Management practice concerns cultural, structural and political change that reflects multiple realities of individuals, groups and the firm (e.g. boards, shareholders, customers and companies). However, management theory that usefully guides such management practice is rudimentary, largely because the multiple realities are not acknowledged. The paper is based on a contemporary case study which focuses on: 1. the creation of management knowledge to identify and address change in two radically-different organisations in knowledge-intensive service industries, and; 2. the application of new management methods to diagnose and facilitate the adoption of technologybased tools by a traditional advice-based service business. 3. the emergence of other stakeholder interests created by early changes and being increasingly influential in the ongoing evolution and management of commercial interest and CMS-based theory and practice. A ‘trialectical ’ relationship between management, the rest of the organisation and other stakeholders is described. Its implications as meta-knowledge which can illuminate real drivers of organizational change

All material, including all figures, is protected by copyright and should not be reproduced without the express permission of the authors. Published in the second edition of the Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Management volume on Management Information Systems. Many of the notions, which underpin the study of Information Systems (IS) and IS Management are based on systems theory. However the sciences of complexity are in many ways complementary to those of systems theory, whilst helping to enrich and deepen our understanding of the arena of discourse. This article outlines the contribution made by complexity to IS. It will define some key principles, explain how they can enrich IS thinking and offer an example to illustrate some of the principles. Complexity Theory A full description of ten generic principles of complex evolving systems can be found in Mitleton-Kelly 2003a. The following is a summary of a few of those

Towards a co-evolutionary perspective on 4G mobile services value networks