مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد بررسی اتحادیه های فنی در صنعت داروسازی

The resource-based view maintains that a firm is composed of a bundle of tangible and intangible resources, and that firms differ in their capabilities to exploit such resources to outpace competitors and generate superior economic returns (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984). Strategy scholars have shown that firms attempting to develop the resources needed to outmaneuver the competition in their respective industries will often engage in strategic alliances to acquire essential knowledge and resources, and develop capabilities that are difficult to accumulate internally. These alliances have been reported to earn participants many benefits, such as cost reductions through economies of scale (Anderson and Weitz, 1992; Powell, 1990), access to markets and technology (Bronder and Pritzl, 1992; Bucklin and Sengupta, 1993), acceleration of new product development and reduction of time to market (Bronder and Pritzl, 1992; Deeds and Hill, 1996; Hamel et al., 1989), and provision of learning opportunities and facilitation of interfirm knowledge transfer (Hamel, 1991; Hamel et al., 1989; Lavie, 2006; Powell et al., 1996). Thus, the value creation aspects of alliances and positions within a network of alliances have been well documented (e.g., Sleuwaegen et al., 2003). However, prior research exploring value appropriation (the division of wealth generated by the alliance between the two partners, or pie splitting) by alliance partners has been limited, but has recently generated scholarly interest (Blyler and Coff, 2003; Gulati and Singh, 1998; Gulati and Wang, 2003; Kalaignanam et al., 2007; Kumar, 2010a, 2010b; Lavie, 2007). As Dyer et al. (2008) suggested, while there is increasing evidence that alliances are an important source of value creation, we know less about the factors affecting how partners split the pie generated from their collaboration. It is this combination of value creation and appropriation that accounts for the contribution of the alliance portfolio to firm performance. In addition, as the few studies on rent appropriation from alliances have mostly focused on how dyadic factors affect asymmetric market returns, scholarly exploration of how network and alliance portfolio variables affect value appropriation is essential (Lavie, 2007).

We explore value appropriation in the realm of alliances through the lens of brokerage positions in alliance networks. Brokerage is the process of connecting actors (bridges) in systems of relations to facilitate access to valued resources (Granovetter, 1973). Being located between established parties presents entities with opportunities for enhanced access to, and ability to utilize, information, as well as increased bargaining power. This will inevitably lead to gains for the broker that will be context-dependent (Stovel and Shaw, 2012) — in the case of alliances, larger shares of the pie that will be rewarded by fi- nancial markets. Granovetter (1973) outlined why these bridging ties are beneficial, bringing to light the network features of brokerage. Since then, various network positions have been shown to increase firm capabilities (Hagedoorn and Schakenraad, 1992; Padula, 2008), which we believe lead to a greater ability to appropriate rents from an alliance.

Stovel and Shaw (2012) elaborate on these brokerage structures, introducing the concepts of “middlemen” and “catalysts” that closely mirror the network concepts of centrality and structural holes respectively. Extending the previous line of research on appropriation in alliances, our study investigates whether firms with these advantageous brokerage positions, such as networks higher in centrality (rich alliance connections with others), or those spanning structural holes (bridging separated sub-groups of firms), will acquire larger shares of the pie compared to their partners. We believe these superior network positions will allow them to better extract and utilize knowledge from the alliance for appropriation and monitoring purposes, and also provide the better connected partner with greater bargaining power (Dyer et al., 2008; Lavie, 2007; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Stovel and Shaw, 2012). Such unequal power distribution has enabled the stronger partner to exploit the weaker in various exchange relations (Dyer et al., 2008; Emerson, 1962). For instance, Frazier et al. (1989) found that manufacturers with power advantages over their dealers (such as being able to replace them easily with alternative sources) were more prone to use strategies to coerce their dealers into complying with actions favorable to the manufacturers. Particularly, in strategic alliance context, Bae and Gargiulo (2004) raised the concept of substitutability and suggested that if one partner depends more on another for resources, the dependent partner has decreased bargaining power. Accordingly, the dependent firm has decreased ability to reap as large a share of the pie as its stronger partner (Dyer et al., 2008).