The Triptych of Strategic Alliances Performance in Developing Countries

Strategic alliances are seen as a means for favoured access to knowledge in order to acquire or maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. On the literature, strategic alliances have evolved to stress mainly determinants such as the specificity of assets, the complementarities of skills, or risk sharing between partners. However, numerous questions remain unanswered; in particular, the impact of strategic alliances on the performance of each partner remains a central preoccupation. The aim of this article is to address this problem by identifying the determinants of the success of strategic alliances involving nation states and multinationals firms. Based on a data from the World Bank, our results confirm that strategic alliances in developing countries are more performing than other local firms and that this performance is based on three successful factors, the triptych of strategic alliances: technological expertise, financial borrowing capacity, and the level of education of the local managers.