Learning and protection of proprietary assets in strategic alliances: building relational capital
基于大规模调查数据，研究发现企业通过构建关系资本并采用整合式冲突管理，可在战略联盟中同时实现向伙伴学习与保护自身核心资产，打破了两者不可兼得的传统观点。
One of the main reasons that firms participate in alliances is to learn know-how and capabilities from their alliance partners. At the same time firms want to protect themselves from the opportunistic behavior of their partner to retain their own core proprietary assets. Most research has generally viewed the achievement of these objectives as mutually exclusive. In contrast, we provide empirical evidence using large-sample survey data to show that when firms build relational capital in conjunction with an integrative approach to managing conflict, they are able to achieve both objectives simultaneously. Relational capital based on mutual trust and interaction at the individual level between alliance partners creates a basis for learning and know-how transfer across the exchange interface. At the same time, it curbs opportunistic behavior of alliance partners, thus preventing the leakage of critical know-how between them. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.