Abstract

Alliances have emerged as a strategy for firms to achieve and sustain a competitive position based on their capacity to innovate. Alliance success demands both strategic and behavioral fit. In order to assure alliance success, firms should develop relational skills by consistently performing a set of pro-social behaviors over time that cut across organizational boundaries. This study supports resource-based and social-exchange explanations of how firms develop relational and collaborative skills under the context of an emergent economy like Mexico. Cross sectional data revealed that sustaining a collaborative venture requires the development of certain sophisticated and complex organizational capabilities. Relational capabilities support and build the social architecture of exchange relationships. Collaborative capabilities support the interaction processes by focusing on preventing outcome discrepancies by working on the collaborative process discrepancies. The interaction of relational and collaborative capabilities results in the achievement of strategic outcomes like the development innovation capabilities.