Cognitive & Relational Distance in Alliance Networks: Evidence on the Knowledge Value Chain in the European ICT Sector

Olivier Brossard () and Jérôme Vicente

Cahiers du GRES (2002-2009) from Groupement de Recherches Economiques et Sociales

Abstract: This paper deals with the firms’ motives for entering into knowledge partnerships. We start by showing that networking strategies are designed to access external knowledge whilst maintaining at the same time a sufficient level of knowledge appropriation and tradability. The ICT sector (and interplaying ones) is particularly concerned by this accessibility/appropriation trade-off. The questions of modularity, complementarity, compatibility and standardisation are critical in the formation of corporate strategic and technological partnerships. Considering that knowledge in this sector is complex and systemic, we construct a theoretical typology of knowledge partnerships by crossing the levels of cognitive and relational proximity with the knowledge phases of exploration, examination and exploitation. This typology is then tested on empirical data through the use of a classification algorithm. The dataset is based on a sample of strategic alliances in the European ICT sector extracted from SDC Platinum. We show that strategic alliances are clustered in relation to the knowledge phases (exploration, examination, exploitation), and that the alliance categories are characterised by levels of relational and cognitive distance which actually are in keeping with the theoretical predictions.

Keywords: knowledge networks; knowledge phases; proximities; strategic alliances; ICT sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L22 L24 L63 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cse, nep-ict, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-knm and nep-net
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://cahiersdugres.u-bordeaux.fr/2007/2007-18.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to cahiersdugres.u-bordeaux.fr:80 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:grs:wpegrs:2007-18

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cahiers du GRES (2002-2009) from Groupement de Recherches Economiques et Sociales Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vincent Frigant ().