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Title: Alliance Portfolio Diversity and Firm Performance: Examining Moderators

Authors: Jamie Collins; Jason Riley

Addresses: Author address listing can be found in the "About the Authors" section at the end of the article.

Abstract: The issue of the appropriate level of diversity in an alliance portfolio has emerged as a critical issue for managers and scholars. This study provides insight into how characteristics of alliance portfolios moderate the relationship between alliance portfolio diversity and firm performance. Firms should be able to best take advantage of diverse alliance portfolios when they have characteristics that enhance trust, knowledge sharing, and innovation. The effects of reciprocity and status similarity on the alliance portfolio diversity-firm performance relationship are examined. The findings of this study support the hypothesized inverted-U relationship between alliance portfolio diversity and firm performance. Findings also show that alliance portfolio characteristics are significant moderators of the alliance portfolio diversity-performance relationship. As predicted, reciprocity positively moderates this relationship while status similarity is unexpectedly found to negatively moderate this focal relationship.

Keywords: Alliance portfolio diversity; firm performance; moderators; reciprocity; status similarity.

DOI: 10.1504/JBM.2013.141209

Journal of Business and Management, 2013 Vol.19 No.2, pp.35 - 50

Published online: 05 Sep 2024 *