Alliance capabilities: A systematic review and future research directions

The ability to manage, integrate and learn from strategic alliances is essential in today's interconnected and globalized economy. Despite the managerial relevance of alliance capability, there remain several open questions related to the conceptualization of alliance capabilities, their antecedents, processes and outcomes, and future research needs. We address these issues through a systematic review of 94 articles from top-tier journals focused on alliance capabilities. This study makes three contributions. The study (1) defines the concept of alliance capabilities when operating in a dyadic relational context by reviewing the rich alliance capability literature, acknowledging and bridging the works conducted in different fields. We (2) identify the main processes, antecedents and outcomes of alliance capabilities and, through this analysis, pave the way for (3) the creation of a comprehensive research agenda to direct future research efforts. Overall, this study extends the existing literature by providing an integrative view of alliance capability research in various fields.