Alliance governance and technological performance: some evidence from biotechnology alliances

Pursuing alliance opportunities are fraught with difficulties due to information asymmetry between the potential partners, as well as technological and/or market uncertainties. In this article, I empirically test how social ties between alliance partners, alliance governance, and individual firm characteristics impact alliance performance. Since alliances are by definition relationships between two or more independent firms, defining and measuring alliance performance is difficult as the partner firms may have different objectives in entering the alliance. Therefore, analyzing alliance performance at different stages of the alliance process, using intermediate indicators of “success” can provide help to better understand the determinants of alliance performance as well as how these determinants may change over time.