The interorganizational learning dilemma : collective knowledge development in strategic alliances

Alliances are volatile key components of many corporations' competitive strategies. They offer fast and flexible means of achieving market access, scale economies, and competence development. However, strategic alliances can encounter difficulties that often lead to disappointing performance. Suggested is that the way partners manage the collective learning process plays a central role in the success and failure of strategic alliances. Present understanding of interorganizational learning primarily focuses on how the individual organization can be a “good partner” or try to win the internal “race to learn” among the partners. The interorganizational learning dilemma is that (1) being a good partner invites exploitation by partners attempting to maximize their individual appropriation of the joint learning, and (2) such opportunistic learning strategies undercut the collective knowledge development in the strategic alliance. [authors abstract]