ACHIEVING ALLIANCE INNOVATION VIA ALLIANCE LEARNING: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Firms increasingly enter into business alliances in an effort to manage the innovation process and with a view to achieving better outcomes. The process therefore likely benefits from greater alliance learning, which can help transform alliance creativity and absorptive capacity into innovative outputs and thus a sustainable advantage for the alliance firms. Survey data collected from 389 Australian firms confirm that alliance creativity and absorptive capacity affect alliance innovation through the mediating role of alliance learning. In contrast, a test of an alternative moderating perspective reveals that alliance learning does not play a significant moderating role in these relationships. Although this study uses a cross-sectional, key-informant design, it offers important insights for research and practice.