Relational Assets, Interorganizational Mechanisms, and Alliance Performance of Venture Firms in Korea

The field of interfirm cooperation in strategic management literature has been considered as the essential topic. Scholars, however, have argued that it is not fully understood what factors drive the superior alliance performance. Up to date, hundreds of researches have tried to reveal the performance drivers in various cooperative settings, using a diverse theoretical lens. Recently, many researchers are struggling for dealing with the process issues in alliance research, using the ‘dynamic view’ on firm’s strategic behavior. These endeavors are stem from the reflection on the bulk of researches represented by the ‘static’ views and/or ‘content-based’ researches on cooperative behavior. Based on the capability-based view, this paper examines the performance drivers of an alliances formed by 137 Korean technology-intensive ventures. The result, first, shows that the relation-specific investment in relational assets such as alliance function, manual, and training would be beneficial to a firm entering into cooperative relationships. Second, the result shows that the investment in and establishment of the interorganizational mechanisms for selecting partners, coordinating relational activities, and mutual learning also would be advantageous to the higher alliance performance.