| While alliances have potential benefits to enhance and to create knowledge, many factors contribute to high alliance failures as well. Based on the transaction cost economics and the resource-based theory of the firm, this study proposes that the value creation of knowledge management alliances differs along six main dimensions: strategies for knowledge acquisition, presence of written knowledge acquisition agreements, alliance forms, technology involvement, objectives of knowledge use, and the firm's characteristics.; This study uses an event study to examine the value creation associated with announcements of knowledge management alliances as measured by short-windows cumulative abnormal returns (CAR). Further, the mean differences and regression analyses are used to investigate whether those six dimensions relate to the value creation of knowledge management alliances and when those dimensions create value. Both common and private benefits are used as proxies of knowledge management alliance values. This study also applies two models of recent research studies that are relevant with the objective of this study (i.e. to investigate the value creation of knowledge management alliances).; The findings provide evidence of the value of knowledge management alliances announcements in stock markets. Two dimensions (i.e. strategies for knowledge acquisition and the presence of written knowledge acquisition agreements) relate to the value creation of the alliances. An appropriation strategy creates higher short-term value than an expansion strategy, and the presence of written knowledge acquisition agreements create higher short-term value than the absence of such agreements in knowledge management alliances. In particular, knowledge providers result in higher short-term value than knowledge receivers and knowledge sharers.; Supplemental analyses show that knowledge sharers also result in higher value than knowledge providers and knowledge receivers, as measured by one-year-event window cumulative abnormal returns. Additionally, larger firms are more likely to be knowledge receivers while smaller firms are more likely to be knowledge providers. In summary, the knowledge-based theory of the firms complementary explains the knowledge management alliance phenomena than the transaction cost economics does. |
