The determinants and performance implications of alliance partner acquisition

The dissertation addresses a series of research questions about alliance partner acquisition (PA), that is, the phenomenon whereby after two firms form an alliance, one of the parent firms acquires the other. It investigates what explains the acquisition of an alliance partner and what are its performance effects. The literature has theorized several advantages and scenarios of PAs, but empirical research remained underdeveloped in part because PAs seemed to be a rare phenomenon deserving of limited academic attention. The dissertation first revisits the relevance of the PA phenomenon by examining how frequent it is relative to repeated alliances, rather than to less comparable one-shot alliances. Second, it examines the antecedents of PAs, taking into account the functional and uni/bilateral dimensions of the initial alliance and contextual contingencies. Third, it looks at PA performance outcomes more deeply than traditionally framed, by examining reactions to the initial alliance. The dissertation aims to contribute to the alliance and acquisition literatures, and especially to the literature that bridges the two topics.