The effects of alliance governance on knowledge acquisition and alliance performance of Korean firms

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the effects of alliance governance including contractual and relational governance on alliance performance. We propose an analytical framework for examining the role of alliance governance on alliance performance with moderating and mediating effects. We obtain 205 survey responses from Korean firms that have experienced technology alliances. Empirical findings show that the relationship between alliance governance and alliance performance is moderated by knowledge acquisition. A contractual governance has a greater influence on explicit knowledge acquisition than tacit knowledge acquisition. On the other hand, relational governance is more closely related to tacit knowledge than to explicit knowledge. The influence of the interaction between relational governance and contractual governance on the performance appears to be negative.

KEYWORDS:

• Tacit knowledge
• explicit knowledge
• knowledge acquisition
• relational governance
• contractual governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Young-Chan Park is an Associate Researcher in the Center for Technology & Innovation Management, Korea University of Technology and Education. E-mail: [email protected].

Byung-Keun Kim is a Professor in the School of Industrial Management, Korea University of Technology and Education. He is the corresponding author of this article. E-mail: [email protected].

Saerom Lee is a Researcher in the Institute of Management Research, Seoul National University. E-mail: [email protected].

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean Government [NRF-2014S1A5B8061859] and by the Graduate School Research Program of KOREATECH [2017].