Coopetitive innovation alliance performance: Alliance competence, alliance’s market orientation, and relational governance

High-technology firms often partake in coopetitive alliances toward improving their innovation performance. As relational governance contributes significantly to explaining the coopetitive alliance success, this research examines the facilitation of relational governance in coopetitive alliances. Drawing from social contract theory, we propose that alliance’s market orientation (AMO) is a means to establish social and cooperative norms, which in turn, increases the viability of relational governance. The analysis of 246 coopetitive innovation alliances among firms in high-technology industries reveals that alliance competence is an important antecedent to AMO, and AMO plays a key role in facilitating relational governance toward improving alliance performance. Furthermore, environmental turbulence enhances the positive influence of relational governance.