Uncertainty, Adaptation, and Alliance Performance
研究联盟中因环境不确定性和伙伴行为不确定性引发的治理适应（如合同变更、所有权调整等），以及这些适应如何影响联盟绩效，基于178家中国企业的数据。
We conceptualize alliance adaptation as a bundle of governance-based change practices in ongoing alliances, including contractual alterations, ownership change, board change, monitoring mechanism change, and key personnel turnover. Leveraging a transaction cost perspective, we investigate how changing environmental conditions (i.e., demand uncertainty and technological uncertainty) and unpredictable partner actions (i.e., behavioral uncertainty) trigger ex post governance adaptations in alliances, and how these adaptations in turn affect alliance performance. Using data collected from 178 partner firms in China, we find that the partner firms will undertake more extensive alliance adaptations as demand uncertainty and behavioral uncertainty increase. However, while the extent of alliance adaptations increases as technological uncertainty increases, there is a threshold level of technological uncertainty beyond which the extent of alliance adaptations decreases. The results also suggest that although alliance adaptations enhance alliance performance, this positive impact may diminish after alliance adaptations reach a certain threshold level. Overall, we contribute to the alliance evolution literature by focusing on why partner firms undertake alliance adaptations and how they benefit from these ex post governance adaptations.