Relationships Of Knowledge Protection, Rule Construction, Relation Maintenance And Alliance Governance

As one of the innovative modes of modern corporate strategy, strategic alliance hasbecome an important way to increase firms’ competitive advantages and more and morefirms have established one or even more alliances. A lot of scholars have discussedabout the motivation, governance, performance, risks and many other issues of strategicalliance. Along with the theoretical and practical development, the study on alliancecapability based on resource-based theory is becoming a new and valuable researchdirection because of its explanation of different alliance performance from firms’internal factors.As an important organizational ability of the enterprises, alliance capability hasreceived considerable attention because of its important role in improving allianceperformance, but there are few studies on the influence of alliance capability on alliancegovernance. Their are two main reasons: first is the multiple constituent dimension ofalliance capability. Second is the differentiation of measure indicators among differentalliance stages. Multidimensional and dynamic concepts need to limit the time so as tosimplify research on alliance capability. Therefore, this paper researches on therelationship between the main alliance capabilities (knowledge protection capacity,capabilities of constructing cooperation rules, capabilities of developing andmaintaining relationship) and alliance governance at different stages of the alliance inperspectives of the alliance process management, and simultaneously consideresdifferences of this relationship among different alliance motivation, which hassignificant value for theories and application.Based on transaction cost theory and resource-based theory, in perspectives of thealliance process management, the paper uses Conceptual model, Structural equationmodel, Logistic regression, Linear regression and other research methods to study therelationship between the main alliance capabilities and alliance governance at differentstages of the alliance in different alliance motivation theoretically and empirically.Compared with the existing researches, the innovations of this study are as follows:①Knowledge protection capacity, capabilities of constructing cooperation rules,capabilities of developing and maintaining relationship as key indicators of alliancecapability, this paper has developed the research on the framework of alliancecapability. Aimed at the status of no complete consensus of framework of alliance capabilitybecause of its complexity, and based on the literature research, interview and theresource-based theory, the paper defined the main alliance capability of enterprises asknowledge protection capacity that determines various partner relation such as friends,acquaintances or strangers before alliance formed, and defined the main alliancecapability of enterprises as capabilities of constructing cooperation rules andcapabilities of developing and maintaining relationship after alliance formed. Thisdefinition enriches current researches on the framework of alliance capability, andprovides theoretical basis for alliance enterprises to improve their alliance capabilities.②Based on the above alliance capability indicators, this paper establishes therelationship of alliance capability and alliance governance, advances the studies on theinfluence of alliance capability on alliance governance.Aimed at the limited typologies of formal governance and relation governance ofalliance governance resulted in ignoring the influences of alliance capabilities in thedifferent alliance stages on choices of alliance governance mechanism, this paperbrought forward that choices of partners are the key governance mechanism beforealliance formed and that formal governance and relation governance are the governancemechanisms after alliance formed. Based on resource-based theory and transaction costtheory, the paper researches the important relationship of the main alliance capabilityand alliance governance in the different alliance stages, and clarifies the choice order ofgovernance mechanisms and their relationships, and enriches current alliancegovernance theory and provides basis for firms to choose suitable alliance governancestrategies according to their main alliance capabilities at different alliance stages.③Based on the academic resource acquired motivation and non-academic resourceacquired motivation, this paper studies on relationship among main alliance capabilities,alliance governance and alliance performance before and after alliance formedempirically. From the empirical study, some valuable results and practical suggestionsfor alliance management were obtained.Detailed empirical results are as follows:1) Before the alliance formed, according to two different motivations and twodifferent level of knowledge protection capacity, there are differences of partnerpreference. In academic resource acquired motivation alliance, when firms have strongknowledge protection capacity, they tend to choose their partners as friends>acquaintances> strangers; when firms have weak knowledge protection capacity, they tend to choose their partners as friends> strangers> acquaintances. Whereas, innon-academic resource acquired motivation alliance, regardless of knowledgeprotection capacity, considering benefits from convenient cooperation andcommunication, firms tend to choose their partners as friends> acquaintances>strangers.In different motivations, the moderating effects of alliance scopes are different. Inacademic resource acquired motivation alliance, alliance business scope plays animportant role in the relationship between knowledge protection capabilities andpartners choosing.In both motivations, alliance of friends have more positive effects on the wholealliance performance than individual performance; in alliance of acquaintances orstrangers, partnership plays different effects on performance according to differentalliance motivations.2) After the alliances formed, in different motivations, alliance capabilitysignificantly affect the choice of alliance governance mechanism. In academic resourceacquired motivation strategic alliances, the stronger the enterprise’s capability ofconstructing cooperation rules, it is more inclined to choose both formal and relationgovernance modes in the same time, and the two modes play the same important roles;the stronger the enterprise’s capability of developing and maintaining their relation, it ismore inclined to choose strengthen the relational governance mechanism but weakenthe formal governance mechanism. In non-academic resource acquired motivationalliance, the stronger the enterprise’s capability of constructing cooperation rules, it ismore inclined to choose to strengthen the formal governance mechanism but weaken therelational governance mechanism; the stronger the enterprise’s capability of developingand maintaining their relation, it is more inclined to choose both formal and relationgovernance modes in the same time, and the two modes play the same important roles.In different motivations, the partner relationship such as friends, acquaintances andstrangers has complex moderating effects on the relationship of capabilities ofconstructing cooperation rules, capabilities of developing and maintaining relationshipand governance mechanism.In both motivations, governance mechanism significantly promotes the whole andindividual performances. However, the effects appears variously to some degree.To some extent, the results of this study advance the research system of strategicalliance, strengthen the theory depth and provide some references to further relevant researches. In addition, these research results offer some guidelines and suggestions tofirms to obtain competence advantages and to achieve strategic objectives with strategicalliance.