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Co‐branding strategies are now seen increasingly in business‐to‐business (B2B) settings, however, there has been little research in this area. This study aims to investigate the benefits of a B2B co‐branding strategy where the partner brands have different brand equity positions.

This study employs a scenario approach incorporating three real multimedia software brands and three fictitious brands in nine hypothetical alliances over 97 respondents. Using repeated measures ANOVA, the study examines the balance of benefits derived from brand partnerships between high‐, medium‐ and low‐brand equity levels firms.

It was found that brands with equivalent equity levels shared the benefits of the co‐branding equally, while lower equity brands benefited more from the alliance than higher equity partners. The results also suggest that very dominant partners gain a greater proportion of functional benefits (such as technical expertise) from the co‐branding strategy.

The study used real and fictitious multimedia software brands in a hypothetical co‐branding strategy, measuring a pre‐defined set of benefits. Different results may be found selecting a different industry setting, brands, and benefits.

Firms sharing equal equity positions can expect to enjoy equivalent benefits from a co‐branding strategy, regardless of how strong the joint equity position is. Before entering asymmetric co‐branding relationships, firms should review the differential benefits expected and ensure that negotiations and success measures reflect the anticipated outcomes. Small firms wishing to pursue a co‐branding partnership with a dominant market player should consider that they are less likely to capture the knowledge‐based benefits from the brand alliance.

This paper is the first to look at the impact of asymmetric brand equity positions in a B2B co‐branding partnership, and adds value to the literature and to practitioner understanding of the role of asymmetry in influencing co‐branding outcomes.

The aim of this paper is to review theories on the kinship‐based collaboration for Asian multinational enterprises (MNEs). Although cooperation issues have reached the top of the Asian MNE agenda, comprehensive empirical and theoretical studies in these areas have remained patchy. Motivated expressly by the sparseness of theory development, this study seeks to establish and examine the model of kinship‐based alliance for MNEs. Drawing on kinship‐based theory, this paper contends that cross‐border collaboration within the same region is increasingly important in driving MNEs from emerging economies to internationalisation.

This study attempts to focus on kinship‐based collaborations from emerging economies to internationalization in the context of high‐tech industries by reviewing relevant studies and presents research propositions.

The study proposes that the model of kinship‐based alliance can be affected by these factors: economic (partner contributions in term of scale‐link theories), geographic, cultural and social (which are broadly defined as kinship‐based factors) factors. Therefore, the model of kinship‐based alliance can be characterized as an evolutionary struggle between these factors to develop a form of cross‐border cooperation.

The model of kinship based alliance enriches the theoretical field of internationalisation strategies for MNEs from developing economies, and this model also provides knowledge of collaboration behaviour for managers of high‐tech firms to create appropriate synergy for each party of an alliance.

This study aims to contribute to discussions on peace between hostile nonmajor powers by focusing on the behavior of major powers. Specifically, alliances between nonmajor and major powers are explored to determine whether such ties contribute to transitions to higher levels of peace. Moreover, systemic factors involving power dynamics and relationships between major powers are also evaluated.

Multiple data sets which altogether covered the era from 1816 to 2010 were analyzed. All pairs of countries that were former foes were considered. Cox hazard regression was conducted.

Systemic instability is influential at transitions from lowest levels of peace for nonmajor power dyads. Eras where major powers are operating multilaterally appear to play a highly limited role in nonmajor powers attaining stable peace. However, alliances with major powers are relatively more crucial in these discussions for nonmajor powers and contribute to higher levels of peace being attained by nonmajor powers.

Further research in particular with case studies can help to elucidate and extend the statistical findings.

Based on the findings, the design and operations of alliances can create more space to hear a wider range of issues that allies can be facing.

While major powers clearly have considerable capacity and global outreach, there has been little attention to whether and how they contribute to former foes attaining higher quality of peace.

The coordination difficulties and risks inherent to business conduct are magnified in alliance relationships, posing a greater challenge for partners. The purpose of this paper is to propose real option perspective to examine how relational risk perceptions shape commitment behaviour in biotechnology alliance relationships.

The hypotheses are tested with survey data on 344 alliance relationships of European Biotechnology small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

This paper suggests that commitment can be seen as a real option, which reduces the degree of asymmetry of information concerning a partner's behaviour. The findings stress that endogenous uncertainty makes unilateral commitment more attractive, but the conclusion does not show that it enhance perceived relationship effectiveness for the party that unilaterally commits in a unique time period.

Nevertheless, within this paper the real options logic to alliance commitments was applied to single dyadic relationships given the alliances were considered an optional context. It would be worthwhile to insert the unilateral commitment decisions for one alliance in the overall portfolio of potential future opportunities.

From a managerial point‐of‐view, this paper shows that unilateral commitments can be seen as the expression of an optional behaviour. These commitments will not benefit the organization in the short term. Managers should adopt a holistic approach and consider all aspects of this problem.

This paper tests a model of unilateral commitment and provides empirical evidence to explain some managerial behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the issue of knowledge transfer in the context of international asymmetric alliances. The objective is mainly to identify the barriers that can impede the knowledge transfer between asymmetric partners and to analyze the solutions adopted to overcome these barriers.

The authors use a qualitative study involving six cases of asymmetric alliances between Tunisian small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) and European multinational corporations (MNCs).

The results of this research highlight a set of obstacles related to the context of asymmetric alliance itself and the nature of knowledge transferred by partners. The study emphasizes the importance of translation using artefacts by both partners and proximity with its geographical, organizational and technological dimensions to overcome these obstacles.

The investigation of knowledge transfer in asymmetric alliances was based on the role played by only three proximity dimensions (geographical, organizational and technological), while other factors, such as institutional, social and cultural issues, were not considered. Indeed, future research may take these variables into account in studying solutions to overcome knowledge-transfer barriers in asymmetric alliances.

The paper calls the attention of asymmetric alliance managers to the importance of translation to perform work processes, facilitate knowledge transfer and overcome linguistic barriers. Managers should use virtual artefacts to reduce the constraints resulting from their geographical remoteness and to strengthen cooperation. Further, reinforcing geographical, organizational and technological proximity between partners involved in an international alliance is essential to facilitate knowledge transfer, essentially of tacit knowledge, and to accelerate innovation.

This study emphasizes the importance of the simultaneous role of artefacts, translation and proximity in overcoming obstacles related to the asymmetric alliance itself and the nature of knowledge transferred by partners. The results shed light on the issue of knowledge generation in asymmetric alliances.

This paper aims to provide guidance for managers so that they may develop advanced supply chain management (SCM) capabilities in the context of asymmetric alliances. These alliances, generally characterised by large dissimilarities between the partners, often facilitate value-creating opportunities.

Using case studies, the paper analyses similarities and differences in SCM between symmetric and asymmetric alliances within supply networks. It focusses on the key dimensions of complementarity, value distribution, relational management and specialisation.

It was found that the question of complementarity, although important, should not be equated to the need for symmetry but to the ability of the firms in the supply network to learn to work together. For small firms who seek co-creation with large partners, this means collaboration, specialisation through relation-specific investments, flexibility and understanding the overall value system in which their business relationships compete is important.

Small firms seeking to develop advanced SCM capabilities have to accept responsibility for selecting a reduced number of key partners and managing relationships. Firms should proactively use the contractual process to learn about partners' expectations and goals and to identify committed champions. These factors play an important role in developing communications and trust, as small firms do not have easy access to senior managers in large corporations.

This paper discovered a novel concept – dual value appropriation – where partners do not divide the total value generated as frequently proposed in the literature, but that it is fully appropriated, as it represents a different value proposition for each of them.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between environment turbulence, knowledge transfer and innovation performance for emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) in an asymmetric international R&D alliance.

Data were collected through a survey of high-tech firms in Zhejiang Province of China from 2013 to 2015.

Innovation performance of EMNEs is positively influenced by knowledge transfer activities (knowledge replication and knowledge adaption), technological and market turbulence, while negatively influenced by institutional turbulence. In addition, different aspects of environmental turbulence moderate the relationship between knowledge transfer practices and innovation performance of EMNEs differently.

Future studies could use a longitudinal design to capture the dynamism driving innovation performance of EMNEs through R&D alliances.

Practical guidelines are provided particularly for EMNE managers on how to develop an innovation strategy by leveraging external knowledge, adaptive innovation and environmental turbulence.

This study deepens the knowledge of how EMNEs enhance their innovation by building the linkage between environmental turbulence and absorptive capacity through knowledge transfer activities in an asymmetric international R&D alliance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the elements of asymmetric motives, i.e., initial cross-border joint venture (CBJV) conditions and relative partner characteristics in emerging nations. The two main objectives of the present research are to identify the elements affecting asymmetric motives in Indian bilateral CBJV and to construct modified total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) for the identified elements of asymmetric motives.

For the current study, the qualitative technique named total interpretive structural modelling was used. The TISM (Sushil, 2012) is a novel extension of interpretive structural modelling (ISM) where ISM helps to understand the “what” and “how” of research (Warfield, 1974) and TISM answers the third question, i.e., “why” in the form of TISM; further checks for the correctness of TISM are given in Sushil (2016). TISM provides a hierarchical model of the elements selected for study and the interpretation of each element by iterative process and also a digraph that systematically depicts the relationship among various elements. TISM is an innovative modelling technique used by researchers in varied fields (Srivastava and Sushil, 2013; Wasuja et al., 2012; Nasim, 2011; Prasad and Suri, 2011). Steps involved in TISM are shown in Figure 1. It uses reachability matrix and partitioning of elements similar to ISM. Also, along with traditional TISM, the modified TISM process was also used where both paired comparisons and transitivity checks were done simultaneously which helped in minimising the redundant comparisons being made in the original process. Furthermore, for identifying the elements of study, SDC Platinum database was used, which was taken from research papers of major journals namely British Journal of Management, Administrative Science Quarterly, Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Academy of Management Journal and Organization Science (Schilling, 2009). The database included all joint ventures that were formed in India, having India as one of the partner firms during fiscal year April 2000 and March 2010. From these, 361 CBJVs and 76 domestic joint ventures were identified. Although 54 CBJVs were excluded from these, a total number of 307 CBJVs were studied in the current research. Among these 307 CBJVs, 201 were from super-advanced nations (G7), 40 CBJVs from developing nations and 66 CBJVs from other developed nations. As 65 per cent of the CBJVs came from G7 nations (France, Italy, Japan, Canada, Germany, USA and UK), in the current study, we tried to examine Indian CBJVs with G7 partners only for a period of ten years as mentioned above.

The results of the study indicate that asymmetric motives are directly affected by critical activity alignment and interdependency. Thus, we can conclude that critical activity alignment of partners in CBJV is an antecedent of CBJV motive and thereby minimises the number of asymmetric motives. Bottom level variables such as culture difference and relative capital structure are considered as strong drivers of asymmetric motives. Diversification, resource heterogeneity and inter-partner conflict are middle level elements. Effect of these elements on asymmetric motives can only be improved and enhanced when improvement in bottom level variables is found. It has been believed that as the relative capital structure among firm increases, CBJVs’ asymmetric motives also increase, the reason being that as the difference in capital structure occurs, gradual change in bargaining power will also occur.

TISM used in the present study provides valuable insights into the interrelationship between identified elements through a systematic framework. The methodology of TISM used has its implications for researchers, academicians as well for practitioners. Further study also examines driver-dependent relationship among elements of interest, i.e., relative partner characteristics and initial CBJV conditions by using MICMAC analysis, which can be viewed as a significant step in research related to bilateral CBJV.

This study aims to investigate the importance and effect of asymmetric technological collaborations’ key success factors in developing countries. The number of collaborations between large enterprises and SMEs, known as asymmetric technological collaborations (ATC) is growing considerably. But this asymmetry in itself can increase the number and intensity of collaboration challenges. So far, limited studies have been conducted on the stability of ATCs, and most of them have been in the context of developed countries. Meanwhile, studying the strength and stability of collaboration in the nano industry with growing market value and increasing newcomers is of particular importance.

Here, with bionic engineering approach, we used chemistry for the first time to identify the main stability factors of ATCs and build our hypotheses and research model. To this end, we introduced the factors affecting the stability of the dative chemical bond as a bionic counterpart of corporate venture capital (CVC), which is a type of ATC, and proposed 4 hypotheses. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) with partial least squares (PLS) method to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The analysis of survey questionnaire data from 26 asymmetric collaborations in Iran’s nanotechnology industry shows that “learning of the acceptor company” with a negative effect, “network ties” and “development of the collaboration host region” with a positive effect and “diversity in the collaboration portfolio” with an inverted U-shaped effect are the most influential factors in the stability and continuity of CVCs, respectively.

The findings of this research can be the beginning of a broad path leading to exploring and getting inspiration from chemistry to analyze management issues.

This paper proposes a framework for understanding knowledge‐related asymmetries in strategic alliances. Their effect on alliance stability, on the realizations of the goals and purposes of the alliance, and on partners’ individual performance is examined. Information asymmetries are thought to have a negative impact on the stability of the alliance. For their part, knowledge asymmetries seem to have a positive impact while learning asymmetries have a negative impact. A mutually reinforcing link is established between the stability of the alliance, the realization of its purpose, and individual partners’ performance. Even if further research is needed, it appears as though a key to growth in an alliance is the careful management and generation of learning, knowledge and information asymmetries.