THE EVOLUTION OF ALLIANCE BEHAVIOR

Building on the theoretical perspectives of organizational inertia and social network research, this study investigated the effects of founding contexts with a focus on early alliance experiences on the emergence of firm’s alliance behavior over time. The development and institutionalization of alliance behavior were hypothesized to be affected by three specific founding contexts: (1) CEO’s personal ties with founding alliance partners i.e. the cooperative partners at the time of focal firm’s founding, (2) reputation of founding alliance partners, and (3) operationalcontributions from the founding alliance partners. Further, organizationalperformance and age were posited to moderate the perpetuating effects of founding contexts on the evolution of alliance behavior.Partial empirical support for the evolutionary model was found.