Building capabilities to manage strategic alliances

Recently, academics have attributed a large part of alliance success to a firm's ability to successfully manage its alliances, also called its level of alliance management capability. We contribute to this growing body of literature by (1) verifying the impact of alliance management capability on alliance performance and (2) analyzing the drivers of alliance management capability. We measure this capability through four types of alliance learning processes and study how each of these processes affects alliance outcome. Furthermore, we take into account several possible drivers of alliance management capability such as organizational culture, commitment of the top team, alliance experience and the alliance function. We refine the results by examining how these factors affect each of the four learning processes underpinning alliance management capability. Our research model will be tested on a sample of 189 Belgian companies using PLS. We find that the commitment of the top management team is the most critical factor in explaining success with alliances.

► What are the drivers of alliance management capability? ► Alliance learning processes influence the alliance success. ► Knowledge sharing tools have a positive impact on alliance success. ► Top management support is crucial for developing alliance management capability.