10 Learning and Strategic Alliances

Various researchers have suggested that an important explanatory factor for the growth in strategic alliances is that alliances provide a platform for organizational learning, giving firms access to the knowledge of their partners. The notion that alliances are a vehicle for learning is the basis for an important and cross-disciplinary stream of research. This chapter examines theoretical and empirical research in the alliance learning area. We have two central objectives. The first is to integrate a large body of research by examining the key research questions addressed. The second objective is to critically examine the existing research as the basis for establishing a research agenda. Although the alliance learning area has generated a substantial amount of research interest and spawned wide-ranging types of inquiry, many important and substantive managerial issues remain underexplored.