Organizational learning and knowledge acquisition

Abstract

Chapter 14 recognizes that many alliances are established in order to enhance a company’s knowledge or capacity to generate new knowledge through learning. It identifies different forms of learning in and through alliances. Alliance partners’ motives toward learning are extremely significant, and the chapter distinguishes between alliances in which partners seek to learn collaboratively for their mutual benefit from other alliances in which learning becomes competitive and potentially exploitative. Effective organizational learning through alliances requires several conditions to be in place and the presence or otherwise of these conditions gives rise to a range of learning processes identified by research on international joint ventures. The closing sections of this chapter turn to the process whereby alliance learning can be facilitated. They identify the potential barriers to learning in alliances, and how the process might be managed constructively.