Equity versus non-equity partnership strategies for leaders, challengers, and niche players

摘要

Competitive strategy should fit well with the focal firm's market position. This study extends this line of research to include a firm's technology positioning by considering market position at the industry level. Two interfirm cooperative strategies considers equity-base (joint ventures) and non-equity alliances as effecting factors. The data file obtains that patent, inter-firm cooperative agreements, and financial data of technology firms from 1997 to 2008. This research demonstrates different strategic logic of industry leaders, challengers, and niche players. The empirical results show a nonlinear trend (an inverted Ushaped) to describe the relationship between technology position and non-equity alliances. As compared with joint ventures, challengers are less strategically active in non-equity alliances to compete against industry market leaders. However, niche players are more likely to engage in nonequity alliances than industry leaders when as compared with joint ventures. In terms of theoretical contribution, this study extends the concept of market competitive strategy from the product-market level to that of industry network level. It also broadens the scope of positioning strategy to include technology so that the abundant literature of the knowledgebased view of the firm can be integrated with the market positioning literature. Moreover, the empirical results will provide strategic implications and a systematic framework in managing partnership strategies for the business managers in the future.