THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION IN STRATEGIC ALLIANCES - INITIAL CONDITIONS OR LEARNING-PROCESSES

We examine how the learning, along several dimensions (environment, ta sk process, skills, goals), that takes place in strategic alliances be tween firms mediates between the initial conditions and the outcomes o f these alliances. Through a longitudinal case study of two projects i n one alliance, replicated and extended in another four projects in tw o alliances, a framework was developed to analyze the evolution of coo peration in strategic alliances. Successful alliance projects were hig hly evolutionary and went through a sequence of interactive cycles of learning, reevaluation and readjustment. Failing projects, conversely, were highly inertial, with little learning, or divergent learning bet ween cognitive understanding and behavioral adjustment, or frustrated expectations. Although strategic alliances may be a special case of or ganizational learning, we believe analyzing the evolution of strategic alliances helps transcend too simple depictions of inertia and adapta tion, in particular by suggesting that initial conditions may lead to a stable 'imprinting' of fixed processes that make alliances highly in ertial or to generative and evolutionary processes that make them high ly adaptive, depending on how they are set.