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Organizational capital, production factor resources, and relative firm size in strategic equity alliances

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Abstract

Access to complementary resources through strategic equity alliance networks is an important activity for both smaller and larger firms. In the literature, there is an intensive debate on the impact of alliance resources for smaller firms. We submit that the effect of alliance resources on the smaller firm financial performance depends on the attributes of these resources. Specifically, we argue that the attributes of partner organizational capital are negatively related and the attributes of partner production factor resources are positively related to the smaller firm financial performance. We test our theoretical framework by applying a longitudinal analysis to a dataset of 1730 firm-year observations of strategic equity alliances in the software industry in 25 countries over an 11-year period. We find support for our hypotheses, highlighting the critical importance of resource attributes for smaller firms in strategic equity alliance networks.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments. In addition, the authors would like to thank the external examiner Professor John Child and Professor Edwin Nijssen for their helpful comments during the development phase of this manuscript.

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    Herman Belgraver & Ernst Verwaal

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Belgraver, H., Verwaal, E. Organizational capital, production factor resources, and relative firm size in strategic equity alliances. Small Bus Econ 50, 825–849 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-017-9897-z

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