Creating a partnership‐oriented, knowledge creation culture in strategic sales alliances: a conceptual framework

Learning is at the crux of strategic alliance success today. The notion that alliances produce synergy implicitly means that alliance partners and employees must learn from the new environment created by the joining of two or more companies. Often, the sales force is overlooked in academic research concerning alliances. This is unfortunate, because the sales force is the “eyes and ears” for the alliance partners and can facilitate the learning process. Proposes a conceptual framework that captures learning at the interorganizational and individual salesperson levels. The research adds to the growing interest in organizational learning and strategic alliances, and it creates the groundwork for an interorganizational learning theory concerning the blending of two or more sales organizations.