Strategic Alliance Outcomes: a Transaction‐Cost Economics Perspective
基于交易成本理论，分析美国医疗行业战略联盟中机会主义行为与联盟绩效的关系，发现合作伙伴可信度和合同保障能减少机会主义行为，而机会主义行为会损害联盟绩效，但相互股权投资与机会主义行为无关。
Empirical research on strategic alliances has been limited because previous studies examined alliance outcomes, and the factors associated with them, from a single partner in a manufacturing alliance. Furthermore, many of these studies have been done from a transaction cost perspective and researchers have inferred opportunistic behavior, rather than directly measuring it and observing its actual relationship with alliance performance. Building on previous transaction cost theory and research, this study seeks to address these gaps by analyzing factors associated with both opportunistic behavior and alliance performance within a major service sector, namely the US healthcare industry. After controlling for asset specificity and alliance age, we found that partner trustworthiness and contractual safeguards were negatively related to opportunistic behavior. Furthermore, opportunistic behavior was negatively related to alliance performance, as hypothesized. Interestingly, mutual equity investments were found to be unrelated to opportunistic behavior, counter to transaction‐cost logic. These findings refine and extend the transaction‐cost economics perspective regarding our understanding of strategic alliance behavior and outcomes, and offer executives in service‐based industries some practical ideas for assuring favorable strategic alliance outcomes.