A contingency view of alliance management capabilities for innovation in the biotech industry

In this research, we analyze the influence of two alliance management capabilities, coordination and interorganizational learning, on the performance of alliances for innovation. By adopting a contingency view, we explore whether the effectiveness of these capabilities depends on certain features of the alliance portfolio configuration (partner and geographic diversity). Based on a sample of Spanish companies belonging to the five leading biotech clusters, our results demonstrate that alliance management capabilities are not equally effective across different contexts. Alliance coordination capabilities become more effective when partner diversity is low and geographic diversity is high. By contrast, interorganizational learning capabilities have a positive effect on alliance portfolio performance when partner diversity is high and geographic diversity is low. These results also have useful implications for managers involved in alliances for innovation, who can direct the organizational efforts towards the most effective alliance capabilities, depending on the features of their alliance portfolio.