Alliance networks and firm performance: The impact of repeated partnerships

A phenomenon that has become the focus of recent research on interorganizational alliance network growth is that firms often enter into repeated relationships with prior partners. The implications of this tendency on corporate performance, however, are not well understood. From transaction cost and network perspectives, I test competing hypotheses on a large sample of multinational corporations. My results indicate clearly that firms not only often do enter into repeated equity-based partnerships but also that those with a greater propensity, to do so experience inferior economic performance. Further, statistical tests indicate that the negative effect of repeated partnerships on performance is particularly strong in environments of greater technological uncertainty. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.