The Influence of Alliance Location on Partner Knowledge Inflows

While prior research highlights the relevance of alliance partners’ geographic location for knowledge inflows of a focal firm, the geographic location of an alliance has received less attention. To fill this void, we examine how the geographic location of an alliance and its partner firms affect the partner firm’s knowledge inflows. We argue that the alliance’s geographic proximity to the partner firm is positively related to a focal firm’s inflow of knowledge from the partner. Moreover, we examine how the focal relationship is moderated by the alliance’s objective (i.e. knowledge generating vs. knowledge leveraging) and by whether the alliance is a domestic or international alliance. Testing our theory on a dataset encompassing 196 observations of alliances lends support to our hypotheses. Our study contributes to research on alliance outcomes in general and the role of geography in particular.