Alliance Management Capabilities and Internationalization Performance of SMEs: The Mediating Role of Strategic Activity

Abstract

How to use the collaboration for innovation and internationalization benefits of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has become one of the most important topic in the strategy literature. However, the alliance management capabilities (AMC) as a key resource to enable the collaboration relationship have not been at the core of research in this area. Thus, we hypothesized that AMC enhance the strategic activity (radical and incremental co-innovation), which ultimately result in SMEs’ internationalization performance. Furthermore, we posited that alliance portfolio diversity moderates the link between AMC and strategic activity. We empirically test our model in the context of a sample of SMEs to the UK manufacturing industry. Our findings supported these hypotheses.