Alliance Formation in the Midst of Market and Network: Insights From Resource Dependence and Network Perspectives
研究结合资源依赖与社会网络理论，分析美国计算机企业1994-2007年数据，发现企业的网络中心性优势会减弱市场依赖对联盟形成的正向影响，而中介优势则增强该影响。
Alliances are often formed as a response to challenges from both market and social forces. Although the resource dependence logic posits that firms enter into alliances to stabilize resource flows between different markets and also to increase market power in their primary industry, it remains unclear whether the social power of firms, generated from alliance networks, may motivate firms to respond differently to the dependence logic of alliance formation. By incorporating social network theory, we argue that a firm’s social network advantages in the primary industry may serve as critical contingency conditions of the dependence logic. Analyses of firms in the U.S. computer industry from 1994 to 2007 suggest that a firm’s centrality advantage marginally reduces the positive effects of market dependencies on alliance formation, whereas a firm’s brokerage advantage enhances the market dependence effect.