Advancing Strategic Alliance Commitment Under Sustainability Conditions: A Process‐Based Benefit–Risk Framework for NPD Alliances

Strategic alliances frequently fail not because they lack value, but because firms struggle to sustain commitment over time. This challenge is especially salient in sustainability‐oriented and new product development (NPD) contexts, where interorganizational collaboration is widely promoted yet difficult to maintain. This study develops a process‐based 2 × 2 framework explaining how the perceived benefit potential from partner competitiveness and the perceived opportunism risk from shared content jointly shape alliance strategies and relational outcomes. The framework identifies four behavioral strategies (active involvement, secured cooperation, defensive cooperation, and risk‐aversive participation) and links each strategy to commitment or dissolution. The framework helps explain why alliances pursuing comparable objectives follow divergent trajectories, depending on how firms perceive and manage the evolving benefit–risk tension rather than on the initial value of collaboration. Illustrated through contemporary sustainability‐oriented alliance cases, the framework offers a diagnostic and prescriptive basis for sustaining collaboration in complex conditions.