Strategic alliance announcements and new venture stock market returns: signaling and resource-based perspectives on the effects of partner firm, new venture firm, and alliance characteristics

摘要

Firms form marketing and technology alliances to access other firms? resources,and these alliances act as signals to investors. Investors use these signals to adjustexpectations about new venture performance prospects, but our understanding ofinvestor responses is incomplete because limited research examines them as a functionof factors other than the alliance announcements. To better understand alliances assignals, we must incorporate factors influencing the resources alliances make available.Thus, my research question is as follows: To what extent do partner firm, focal firm, andalliance characteristics provide signals to investors about the resources alliances makeaccessible? My theory integrates signaling theory and resource-based theory on strategicalliances, and an event study is used to analyze investor responses to alliances formed byhigh technology new ventures recently having undergone initial public offerings.The findings provide evidence both in support and in contradiction to signalingtheory and resource-based theory on strategic alliances. For example, signaling theorylogic suggests both that the visibility and prestige of large partners and that the uncertainty associated with small and young firms enhance the strength of signalsassociated with alliance announcements. In this study, there is no support for the formerhypotheses and limited support for the latter. Moreover, although both perspectivessuggest that the new venture?s alliance experience increases investor responses, sucheffects were not found.There was some evidence to support the signaling theory argument that signalconsistency strengthens responses. Specifically, investors respond favorably tomarketing alliances when the new ventures? alliance partners have strong commercialresources (many new products per year). There is also evidence that investors respond tothe possibility of resource complementarity, contingent on which firm has the resourcesthat complement the alliance. For instance, investors value marketing alliances whennew ventures have strong R&D resources. In technology alliances, investors mayrespond more favorably when new ventures have strong commercial resources (highadvertising intensity), but may respond negatively when partners have such resources. Insum, this study provides some support for signaling theory and resource-based theory onstrategic alliances, but also provides null results that are inconsistent with either.