earticle

영어

Firms today actively engage in both exploration and exploitation alliances in order to overcome external environmental uncertainties and create competitive advantages, yet there is a lack of research on influencing factors on the configuration of alliance portfolio in terms of exploration and exploitation. Identifying the influencing factors is expected to play a meaningful role in understanding and establishing a firm’s alliance portfolio strategy because an alliance portfolio can be viewed as a firm’s strategic behavior in light of external environments and internal capabilities. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find the influencing factors categorized into environmental uncertainties and internal capabilities on the configuration of alliance portfolio. To this end, we conducted a random effects panel Tobit regression model with a sample of 128 Korean local manufacturers that had responded to ‘Survey of Business Activities’ of Statistics Korea as they had engaged in alliances at least 3 years in a row between 2009 and 2014. The key findings are as follows. First of all, environmental uncertainties have an effect on the configuration of alliance portfolio. It has been found that the higher the uncertainty of the demand environment, the higher the tendency of increasing the exploitation alliance ratio in the alliance portfolio, and the higher the uncertainty of the competitive environment, the higher the tendency of increasing the exploration alliance ratio. However, the uncertainty of the technological environment is found to have no significant effect on the configuration of alliance portfolio. Second, firm’s internal capabilities have an impact on the configuration of alliance portfolio as well. Technological capability appeared to have positive effects on the exploration alliance ratio, and marketing capability showed positive effects on the exploitation alliance ratio. On the other hand, global capability showed no significant effect on the configuration of alliance portfolio. Based on the empirical results, this study suggests meaningful implications for an avenue of firm’s effective configuration on alliance portfolio.