This study examines how inter-organizational partnership characteristics—specifically goal alignment, partnership duration, and stakeholder diversity—affect corporate sustainability, and investigates the moderating role of alliance management capability (AMC) in resource-constrained innovation ecosystems.
We surveyed 202 managers and employees at firms in the University of Tehran Science and Technology Park using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).
All three partnership characteristics—goal alignment, partnership duration, and stakeholder diversity—have significant positive effects on corporate sustainability. Notably, AMC exerts a paradoxical moderating role: it amplifies the positive impact of long-term partnerships but diminishes the effects of goal alignment and stakeholder diversity in high-AMC firms.
This study advances theory by demonstrating the paradoxical effects of AMC, showing that it can both enable and constrain sustainability outcomes depending on partnership characteristics, thereby extending the Resource-Based View and the Information Overload Hypothesis. Practically, the findings provide actionable guidance for managers to optimize partnership portfolios and strengthen sustainability strategies in innovation-driven and resource-constrained environments.
