Explaining the interplay of value creation and value appropriation in strategic alliances: A developmental perspective

How firms respectively create and appropriate value by means of alliances are questions that management scholars have considered for several decades. Scholars have identified various factors underlying how alliances create value and how partner firms appropriate such value, respectively. Fewer studies have dealt with how both issues relate, and fewer yet have examined the interplay between value creation and value appropriation as an alliance develops. The purpose of this paper is to organize the extant literature through a theoretically coherent developmental framework that informs research on value creation and value appropriation as distinct but inter-related phenomena. A systematic review of 234 articles reveals factors associated with value creation, factors driving value appropriation, and, especially, interplay factors that explain potential cycles of value creation and value appropriation within an alliance. We also identify some important themes and theoretical directions for future research. This study thus contributes to alliance research by (1) developing a structured framework that explains not only the respective drivers of value creation and value appropriation, but also how they interplay in alliances; (2) explicating theoretically the specific factors that explain the interplay of value creation and value appropriation in cycles of alliance adaptation; and (3) developing recommendations for the further development of theory, especially for these interplay effects.