| Non-cooperation in strategic alliances is critical to firms because it can impair an alliance's competitiveness, and contribute to firm or alliance failure. A firm may choose not to cooperate by competing against its partners, behaving opportunistically or defecting. This work focuses on defection, because it is the most transparent behaviour; and has the greatest potential to harm a partner's or alliance's interests. This work contributes to the alliance literature by focusing on non-cooperation in multifirm settings, and by integrating power and interdependence from international relations with resource-based theories of alliance.; This thesis' hypothesis is that power and interdependence determine whether a firm in an alliance is able to translate a desire not to cooperate into action. Despite a desire not to cooperate to increase a firm's share of the returns, reduce its dependence on the alliance, or respond to others' non-cooperation, a firm may not be able to act, given a lack of viable options or high switching costs.; Power and interdependence provide a framework to identify the conditions under which firms have the capability to defect. The framework measures a firm's importance to its alliance as a whole and to its individual partners, identifies which firm needs the other's resources more, the immediacy and magnitude of the impact of a partner's actions, and whether the firm has the ability to respond. Power and interdependence are a function of the type and uniqueness of the resources contributed, a firm's financial position, and the extent to which partners are technologically or operationally integrated. The framework is applied to the airline industry, Microsoft's relationships in the PC hardware and software industries and in Internet-access technologies, and to the Ballard Power Systems-DaimlerChrylser-Ford fuel cell vehicle alliance.; The cases show that the ability to act depends on how much a firm needs its partners' resources, how tightly integrated they are into the alliance, and what external options are available. Firms which were more powerful and less dependent had greater freedom to act. The cases also show that power and interdependence is influenced by regulation and by the alliance's structure and governance. |
