Alliance Management Capability and Firm Performance: Using Resource-based Theory to Look Inside the Process Black Box

This study employs the framework of the resource-based theory (RBT), and investigates the process by which firms can realize the potential value of their alliance management capability. In this process, co-exploration and co-exploitation are regarded as the two main strategic actions needed to leverage alliance management capability. Analyses of multisource, time-lagged data on 172 Finnish manufacturing firms show that alliance management capability has an inverted U-shaped effect on co-exploration, but an increasingly positive effect on co-exploitation. Whereas co-exploration drives firm growth in the longer run, co-exploitation has a positive effect on firms' short-term financial performance. Ambidextrous pursuit of simultaneous co-exploration and co-exploitation, however, is negatively, rather than positively related to firm performance. By shedding light on the black-box process that takes place between alliance management capability and firm performance, these findings add new insights into research on RBT in general and alliance management capability in particular. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.