Chapter 1: Enacting the Alliance: Towards a Role-Based Theory Of Alliance Implementation

Alliances are essential elements of the strategies of many firms (Doz & Hamel, 1998; Kale, Singh, & Bell, 2009; Rothaermel & Boeker, 2008). As a consequence, academic studies of interfirm alliances have flourished (for overviews see Contractor & Lorange, 2002; Ireland, Hitt, & Vaidyanath, 2002; Kale & Singh, 2009). In spite of the wealth of insights generated by this literature, we think that there is a set of questions that tends to remain neglected: questions pertaining to the roles of individual employees and managers in alliances. For instance, when Hennart and Zeng (2005) state that “structural solutions consist in manipulating the individual’s payoff matrix for cooperation and defection so as to increase the former relative to the latter” (p. 108), “individual” refers to the allying firms as unitary actors, and not to the individual managers and employees who decide to cooperate or defeat. This is in line with many other studies in which psychological concepts are applied at the level of the firm, for example, “apriori conceptions” (Kumar & Das, 2007), “psychological commitment” (Kumar & Nti, 1998; Medcof, 1997), “frame of mind” (Kumar & Andersen, 2000) or “identification” (Cullen, Johnson, & Sakano, 2000). However, firms are no unitary actors, but complex social systems comprising individuals and groups whose mindsets and interests influence the alliance (De Rond & Bouchikhi, 2004). It is generally understood that referring to a firm as a unitary actor is a shorthand for the assumption that decisions and activities in firms are organized in such a way that firms act as if they were rational actors striving after certain goals (Foss, 2007; Simon, 1957). Likewise, even if we acknowledge that interorganizational relationships are both shaped and maintained by individual boundary spanners (Inkpen & Curral, 1997; Nooteboom, Berger, & Noorderhaven, 1997), we could still analyze firms engaging in alliances as unitary actors by taking the perspective of top managers who are responsible for the overall strategic direction of the firm (Janowicz-Panjaitan & Noorderhaven, 2009; Prahalad & Bettis, 1986). Top management in this view represents the interests of the firm in the alliance, and selects a governance structure that disciplines the behaviors of the individual boundary spanners through whose actions the benefits of the alliance need to be realized.