Knowledge and information leakages in strategic alliances with competitors
Date Issued
2022
Type
Resource Types::text::thesis::doctoral thesis
Abstract
Alliances allow businesses to access valuable resources in complex environments. Nonetheless, these interfirm agreements also make firms’ boundaries permeable to involuntary leakages of information and knowledge. This dissertation theoretically examines the interplay between information and knowledge leakages, the nature and intensity of market competition, and the incentives to pursue strategic alliances with competitors. To this end, the dissertation adopts a game-theoretic approach that accounts for the market consequences of knowledge and information leakages and the incentives to pursue strategic alliances that they generate. The main findings suggest that knowledge and information leakages might induce firms to engage in opportunistic behaviour and that the threat of such behaviour has important effects on the incentives to participate in these interfirm agreements. Thus, while knowledge leakage may drive firms to behave opportunistically by imitating its competitor, information leakage has the potential to alter the information structure of competition, modifying the incentives to generate joint value through the pursuit of strategic alliances. These findings constitute novel theoretical insights about the effects of knowledge and information leakages on the competitive behaviour of firms interacting in environments in which they simultaneously cooperate and compete with the intent to create joint value</jats:p>