Alliance Portfolio: Origin, Research Front and Theoretical Framework

Zhou Jia, Chen Jin, Mei Liang

Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 39, Issue 06, pp. 83 - 97 (2017)  DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.2017.06.007

Abstract

The research of alliance portfolio proves valuable to understand and explain how the firms which engage in multiple strategic alliances manage the inter-organizational relationships and internal governance, and emerges on-going attention in strategic management field. Based on scientific metrology, this paper combs 233 English papers in alliance portfolio, illustrates systematically the concept origin of alliance portfolio, analyzes the connotation, attributes and research focuses of related conceptions, and constructs " gold ingot” framework of alliance portfolio research which integrates core issues of alliance portfolio with corresponding theoretical basis. It shows that research front of alliance portfolio covers three dimensions, namely why to build alliance portfolios, alliance portfolio’s configuration and how to manage the governance of alliance portfolios, including nine core topics, corresponding to four basic theories that include social network theory, organization learning theory, resource-based logic and theories of environment alignment.

Keywords

alliance portfolio; research front; gold ingot framework; scientific metrology