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Partner Type Diversity in Alliance Portfolios: Multiple Dimensions, Boundary Conditions and Firm Innovation Performance
Author(s) -
Hagedoorn John,
Lokshin Boris,
Zobel AnnKristin
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of management studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.398
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1467-6486
pISSN - 0022-2380
DOI - 10.1111/joms.12326
Subject(s) - alliance , relevance (law) , modularity (biology) , scope (computer science) , variety (cybernetics) , diversity (politics) , business , industrial organization , marketing , modular design , distribution (mathematics) , software deployment , knowledge management , computer science , mathematics , sociology , political science , artificial intelligence , mathematical analysis , genetics , anthropology , law , biology , programming language , operating system
Our research extends the current knowledge based view on the configuration of alliance portfolios and their deployment in different external knowledge environments. We study these alliance portfolios in a longitudinal sample (1996–2010) for over three thousand firms that operate in a large number of industries in the Netherlands. Our findings indicate that partner type variety and partner type relevance, as different dimensions of partner diversity in alliance portfolios, both have an inverted U‐shaped association with firm innovation performance. However, alliance portfolios characterized by both high partner type variety and high relevance cause inferior innovation performance. Different external knowledge environments, characterized by different levels of industry modularity and scope of knowledge distribution, moderate the inverted U‐shaped associations of partner type variety and relevance in alliance portfolios with firm innovation performance in opposing directions. While for partner type variety, a high level is found to be optimal in environments with greater modularity or broader scope of knowledge distribution, for partner type relevance it turns out that a low level is optimal under more modular industry conditions.