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Theory predicts that balancing exploratory and exploitative learning (i.e., ambidexterity) across alliance portfolio domains (e.g. value chain function, governance modes) increases firm performance, whereas balance within domains decreases performance. Prior empirical work, however, only assessed balance/imbalance within and across two domains. The purpose of this study is to determine if theory generalizes beyond specific domain combinations. The authors investigated across multiple domains to determine whether alliance portfolios should be imbalanced toward exploration or exploitation within domains or balanced across domains. The authors also extended prior research by exploring whether the direction of imbalance matters. Current theory only advises managers to accept imbalance without helping with the choice between exploration and exploitation.

Hypotheses are tested using fixed-effects generalized least squares (GLS) regression analysis of a large 13-year panel sample of Fortune 500 firms from 1996 to 2008.

With respect to the balance between exploration and exploitation within each of the five domains investigated, imbalanced alliance portfolios had higher firm performance. No evidence was found that balance across domains relates to performance. Instead, for four of the five domains, imbalance toward exploration related positively to firm performance.

An alliance portfolio that allows for exploration in some domains and exploitation in other domains appears more difficult to implement than prior theory suggests. Firms benefit mostly from using the alliance portfolio for exploratory learning.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of what drives firms’ choice between exploration alliances and exploitation alliances by examining the role of organizational slack and its interaction with market uncertainty.

An empirical study is conducted based on 1,614 alliances formed by 581 US biotechnology firms, and the hypotheses are tested using a zero-inflated multilevel Poisson model.

The results indicate that firms’ strategic choice to pursue exploration or exploitation alliances is a reflection of organizational intention and adaptation to environmental turbulence. More specifically, firms with more financial slack tend to form more exploration alliances and fewer exploitation alliances. However, under high market uncertainty, firms with financial slack tend to establish more exploitative partnerships and avoid exploration collaborations.

This paper contributes to the literature on exploration–exploitation alliances, which tends to fall short of providing an understanding of why organizations pursue such alliances. By identifying the impact of organizational slack and its interaction with market uncertainty, this study shows that organizations are able to respond to environmental change, and those with capabilities are likely to craft their strategic choice configurations based on their own characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework and propositions on a capability-based view that examine the role of a firm’s primary type of alliances, i.e., exploration or exploitation, in the determinants and impact of alliance portfolio capability.

This is a conceptual research paper, which builds on prior conceptual and empirical management research.

Regarding determinants, capability-based arguments indicate that firms with an emphasis on exploration alliances have higher levels of alliance portfolio capability. However, a focus on exploration alliances aggravates the development of alliance portfolio capability through alliance experience and a dedicated alliance function. Regarding impact, alliance portfolio capability may positively affect a firm’s alliance, innovation, and financial performance. While alliance portfolio capability is assumed to have an equally positive effect on alliance performance for all types of alliance portfolios, a relative focus on exploration alliances is expected to limit the positive effects of alliance portfolio capability on innovation and subsequent financial performance.

These new conceptual arguments help to reconcile inconsistent earlier findings, and they deepen the understanding of interfirm differences in alliance portfolio capability and performance.

This study delves in the controversy about the nature and the sign of the effect of strategic alliances and exploration and exploitation capabilities on innovation and new product development. The paper analyses the effects of knowledge sharing and strategic alliances relationships at the firm level. Specifically, we study the influence of strategic alliances relationships in new product development and the mediating role of exploration and exploitation as dynamic capabilities.

This investigation proposes a theoretical model tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). The multigroup analysis was performed to understand the moderating role of. A questionnaire survey was developed to explore the relations between strategic alliances and innovation and new product development variables. For this study, 387 valid questionnaires were collected from a sample of Portugal SME' firms. A 90-item questionnaire was submitted to employees managers of a large number of Portuguese SMEs, which consists to study the relationships among all the variables.

The results show that exists a positive direct influence of strategic alliances on innovation and new product development, and mediating impact the exploration and exploitation by the moderating role of knowledge sharing.

This study has some methodological limitations affecting its potential contributions. A cross-sectional study that captures one image in time and its ability to identify strict causality between variables is limited. Furthermore, the results are based on log collected from a key respondent, rather than broader actual data. The results are restricted to one country, Portugal. Future research should initially target different countries. Such research could then test the generalizability of the results.

To fill this managerial relevance gap, we propose a process model in which the main antecedents of alliance stability will be examined. We argue that an alliance's evolutionary dynamics depend on these factors and variables that the partners must assess and manage over its developmental stages. In this sense, managers have significant scope to influence the ultimate success of strategic alliances. This study highlights the need to actively manage the cooperation – competition (coopetition) tension with the alliance partner and to apply the knowledge acquired from the partner to create new knowledge to enhance innovative performance

This paper contributes to fill the gap between strategic alliances and new product development mediated by exploration and exploitation in the dynamic capabilities view.

The purpose of this paper is to define co-exploitation, co-exploration, and alliance ambidexterity from the perspective of organizational learning; to analyze how knowledge bases, structural arrangements, and control mechanisms of R&D alliances influence co-exploitation and co-exploration; and to discuss how to achieve alliance ambidexterity by managing paradoxes around knowledge bases, structural arrangements, and control mechanisms.

This is a conceptual paper focussing on how to balance exploitation and exploration at the alliance level through managing three paradoxes of cooperation: similarity vs complementarity, integration vs modularity, and contracts vs trust.

While technological similarity, structural integration, and contracts are more likely to promote co-exploitation, technological complementarity, structural modularity, and trust are more likely to facilitate co-exploration. Alliance ambidexterity, which is beneficial for alliance performance, derives from either the combination of technological complementarity, structural integration, and contracts, or the combination of technological similarity, structural modularity, and trust temporally.

Researchers should analyze the possibility of building alliance ambidexterity in other types of interorganizational relationships, and find other possible antecedents of interorganizational learning.

Managers should not simply treat R&D alliances as one of exploratory interorganizational relationships, but pay equal attention to co-exploitation and co-exploration. To achieve this balance, practitioners should combine technological complementarity with structural integration and contracts, or integrate technological similarity with structural modularity and trust.

This paper is one of the first contributions that analyze how an R&D alliance could gain its ambidexterity through the management of nested cooperation paradoxes.

There has been little research discussing the role that new product creativity plays in achieving alliance ambidexterity and how causal ambiguity may be a potential moderator in the association between new product creativity and alliance ambidexterity. The purpose of this study is to identify the contingent role of causal ambiguity and examine the relationships between new product creativity, causal ambiguity and alliance ambidexterity.

In this empirical study, a questionnaire approach is used to collect data, and moderated structural equation modeling is used to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that new product creativity has a positive influence on alliance ambidexterity, whereas causal ambiguity moderates these associations. When causal ambiguity increases, the positive impact of new product creativity on alliance ambidexterity is attenuated.

This study integrates the ambidexterity literature and the alliance literature by applying the concept of ambidexterity to a strategic alliance context. The moderating role of causal ambiguity echoes previous research postulating causal ambiguity as a barrier to knowledge transfer in alliances. Given a higher level of causal ambiguity, firms face more difficulty when they attempt to develop new product creativity to achieve the desired level of alliance ambidexterity.

Managers could initiate incentive programs and build supportive environments that facilitate new product creativity. Firms will be capable of elaborating the potential of new product creativity to further facilitate alliance ambidexterity. Managers need to pay attention to causal ambiguity that may have a moderating influence on the relationship between new product creativity and alliance ambidexterity.

This study contributes to the synthesis of new product creativity and alliance ambidexterity and helps scholars and managers to better understand the moderating effect of causal ambiguity in the context of the innovation and ambidexterity literature.

March’s 1991 work on exploitation and exploration has been studied in many different industries. The purpose of this paper is to analyze signals emanating from exploration and exploitation alliances within the pharmaceutical industry context. Specifically, the authors explore market reactions to announcements of alliance formations based not only on alliance type but also in terms of their marketing intensity and leverage.

The authors employ a two-stage event-study market model using a two-day event window (event days 0, +1), creating cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). In the second stage, the authors regress the CARs against an array of control and explanatory variables.

Findings suggest that even though firm announcements of exploration and exploitation formations initially generate favorable market reactions, the former has a greater impact on CAR relative to the latter. Furthermore, leverage and marketing intensity moderate the relationship between firms’ alliance formation announcements and CARs generated. In particular, firms’ alliance formation announcements generate relatively greater market reactions at lower (higher) levels of the firm’s leverage (market intensity).

Event studies are valuable for gauging initial impressions of management action, but they are not meant to address long-term value creation. While market reactions suggest the likelihood of an alliance’s success or failure, managers also assess the risk to a firm’s financial health should the alliance fail. As a result, announcements that signal the firm has discretionary capabilities to ameliorate the effect of a failed alliance are better received.

This study is the first to analyze the stock market’s perception and valuation of different types of risk, classified by exploration vs exploitation alliances. The study also contributes to the literature by analyzing how investors use the information about a firm’s financial leverage and marketing activities to fine-tune their valuation of different types of risk-taking activities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how multinational enterprises (MNEs) manage human resources (HR) in explorative and exploitative alliances in smart city projects (SCPs).

In this paper, the authors adopt an explorative and qualitative approach based on multiple case studies thanks to the interviews with 21 smart city managers of MNEs who are deeply involved in SCPs.

The authors found that MNEs use many different partnerships and “temporal separation” in many cities all around the world in order to maximize the benefits of both exploration and exploitation. According to the aim of the project, MNEs implemented different HR practices intentionally targeted toward managing social relations among internal and external employees involved in SCPs.

The authors highlighted that MNEs tend to develop different ties among employees and external partners and to use different HR practices according to the nature and to the aim of the alliances. Thus, the development of human resource management systems becomes crucial in supporting organizational ambidexterity through alliances.

This paper gives useful insights in improving the effectiveness of MNEs in SCPs. Due to the business opportunities arising from the application of ICT and technological innovation to urban services, MNEs are becoming an important player in smart cities. Increasing the effectiveness of the SCPs leads faster to more economically, socially and environmentally sustainable cities.

The development of alliances has a key role in strengthening and complementing firms’ exploration and exploitation agendas in SCPs. Thus, this paper provides guidelines to MNEs in order to adapt HR practices and to rethink the role of HR within and across corporate boundaries in an emergent context of analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of alliance portfolio internationalization (API) on firm performance in the context of exploitation alliances.

The hypothesis is tested by applying a panel regression using a sample of 64 airlines over a nine years period.

As a result, the study finds a U-shaped relationship between API and firm performance.

The results are particularly relevant for firms using many exploitation (e.g. marketing) alliances.

In the context of exploitation alliances, managers should focus either on local partners or to take advantage of partners with a high degree of foreignness. Stuck in the middle seems to be not advantageous.

Previous work found an S-shaped relationship between portfolio internationalization and firm performance while concentrating on exploration alliances. In contrast, this study shows that exploitation alliance portfolios do not experience a decline of firm performance at high levels of portfolio internationalization.

The fiercely increasing dynamics in many industries, which are a result of globalization, are main reasons for the increasing number of alliances during the past decade. Firms foster the exploitation as well as the exploration processes by engaging in alliances. To do so, firms need specific capabilities, such as an alliance capability. This contribution aims at describing the development process of alliance capability. Alliance capability will be analyzed in this contribution on a theoretical and qualitative basis by performing a case study on a global acting financial institution, operating in a highly dynamic and coopetitive environment, the Deutsche Börse AG.