how do consumers make choices a survey of evidence in this paper we review the evidence about the purchase behaviour of consumers we concentrate on the characteristics of the choice process choice of the external information source and nature of the information obtained from these sources the impact of important systematic differences among consumers and products on choice behaviour is also discussed

a behavioral theory of r d expenditures and innovations evidence from shipbuilding i base an integrated model of innovation development and launch on the behavioral theory of the firm this model specifies that research and development expenses are increased when low performance causes problemistic search and when excess resources cause slack search innovations generated by search are launched if low performance gives managers high risk tolerance using data from shipbuilding firms i show that high performance reduces r d intensity and innovation launches and high slack increases r d intensity as predicted

determining the scale of r d investment for renewable energy in korea using a comparative analogy approach abstract the rising price of fossil energy due to increasing global energy consumption has stimulated investment in renewable energy despite korea s high dependence on foreign energy sources it is well behind other developed countries with regard to renewable energy production this study attempts to develop a reasonable r d investment plan based on the forecasted diffusion of renewable energy in the korean market by analyzing the experiences of other developed countries the german market is selected as the reference case on the basis of its similarity to the korean market the realized data indicate that the growth of technology is proportional to cumulative r d investment a final investment schedule is established based on the goal of meeting the target penetration level the suggested investment plan which differs substantially from the plan recently announced indicates the necessity of more active investment in early stage and supportive policies for r d into renewable energy

consumer information search revisited theory and empirical analysis a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding consumers information search behavior is presented unlike previous research our model identifies not only what factors affect consumers search behavior but also how these factors interact with each other in particular the model emphasizes the effect of prior brand perceptions on the search process we argue that when consumers have brand specific prior distributions of utility the existence of relative uncertainty among brands is necessary for search to be useful thus we explain why product class involvement or low search costs may not be sufficient to induce large amounts of search activity and why there may be an inverted u shaped relationship between search activity and experience we test our theory on consumers search behavior for new automobiles using data collected contemporaneously with consumers actual decision process our data support our theory

strategic analysis of diffusion of renewable energy in the nordic countries abstract today there are concerns related to security of energy supply growing energy demands limitations of fossil fuels and threats of disruptive climate changes to overcome the challenges diversification and utilization of renewable energy resources are defined as the main strategies however successful diffusion of renewable energy requires consideration to many factors including social economic and technical ones nordic countries are among the leading countries on successful development of renewable energy and energy efficiency this research in the frame of a strategic conceptual analysis studies the policies and achievements of the nordic region in their development of renewable energy the framework consists of four layers including dimensions characters objectives and key schemes

economic distance and the survival of foreign direct investments taking a theoretical perspective contrasting resource exploitation with resource exploration we argue that foreign direct investments fdis hazard rates are lower in countries that are either m

reservation price as a range an incentive compatible measurement approach abstract drawing from the literature on buyers uncertainty in preference and product knowledge the authors suggest and empirically test the proposition that a consumer s reservation price for a product is more meaningfully and accurately represented as a range than as a single point given this conceptualization they propose an approach for incentive compatible elicitation of a consumer s reservation price range icerange that builds on becker degroot and marschak s 1964 point of purchase method two empirical applications of the approach provide an assessment of its practicality and its predictive performance relative to current methodologies for reservation price elicitation the results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms the benchmark approaches in terms of predictive validity and yields valuable incremental information about uncertainty in product valuation

single option aversion this article documents single option aversion an increase in consumers desire to search when faced with a single option this effect can lead to a product being chosen more often when competing alternatives are included in the choice set contrary to various rational models of search as well as to recent research on choice conflict showing that additional options can lead to higher deferral rates a series of lab studies document this effect differentiate it from other context effects and test some of its boundary conditions the results suggest that single option aversion is not driven by the information provided by the additional options that the desire to search is critical for this effect to occur and that the effects of single option aversion are not limited to the immediate choice set these results have both practical and theoretical implications for the understanding of consumer search and choice deferral

confidence intervals for evaluating benefits estimates from dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies i evaluate the potential usefulness of nonmarket valuation concepts and techniques from environmental economics for improving wildlife conservation the concepts include distinguishing between on site recreation use value and off site passive use or

the embeddedness of networks institutions structural holes and innovativeness in the fuel cell industry plentiful research suggests that embeddedness in alliance networks influences firms innovativeness this research however has mostly overlooked the fact that interorganizational ties are themselves embedded within larger institutional contexts that can shape the effects of networks on organizational outcomes we address this gap in the literature by arguing that national institutions affect the extent to which specific network positions such as brokerage influence innovation we explore this idea in the context of corporatism which fosters an institutional logic of collaboration that influences the broker s ability to manage its partnerships and recombine the knowledge residing in its network as well as the extent of knowledge flows among network participants we argue that differences in institutional logics lead brokerage positions to exert different effects on firm innovativeness we propose that the firm spanning structural holes obtains the greatest innovation benefits when the firm the broker or its alliance partners are based in highly corporatist countries or under certain combinations of broker and partner corporatism we find support for these ideas through a longitudinal study of cross border fuel cell technology alliance networks involving 109 firms from nine countries between 1981 and 2001

estimating search benefits from path tracking data measurement and determinants we study consumer search behavior in a brick and mortar store environment using a unique data set obtained from radio frequency identification tags which are attached to supermarket shopping carts this technology allows us to record consumers purchases as well as the time they spent in front of the shelf when contemplating which product to buy giving us a direct measure of search effort we estimate a linear regression of price paid on search duration in which search duration is instrumented with a search cost shifter we show that this regression allows us to recover the marginal return from search in terms of price at the optimal stopping point for the average consumer our identification strategy and coefficient interpretation are valid for a broad class of search models and we are hence able to remain agnostic about the details of the search process such as search order and search protocol we estimate an average return from search of 2 10 per minute and explore heterogeneity across consumer

all things considered the role of choice set formation in diversification abstract the diversification effect a tendency toward greater variety as multiple choices are made simultaneously in advance of consumption is a robust and important phenomenon researchers have typically explained the diversification effect in terms of differences in the process by which people select items from among those available this precludes the possibility that the locus of the effect lies in people s choice sets themselves that is how people decide which options to consider when making choices the authors examine the effects of set formation using an experimental choice sequence task and conjoined stochastic model of set formation and conditional choice the findings demonstrate that set formation plays a critical role in diversification previously chosen options are indeed discounted but only for simultaneous choices and only in the set formation portion of the model furthermore the expected number of choice set items is substantially greater in multiple versus single item choice s

buyer uncertainty and information search preliminary measures of pre purchase uncertainty were developed through focus group interviews and were administered to a nationwide sample of recent appliance purchasers responses indicated the presence of two general types of uncertainty knowledge uncertainty uncertainty regarding information about alternatives and choice uncertainty uncertainty about which alternative to choose in exploring how each of these uncertainty dimensions was related to search behavior we found that choice uncertainty appeared to increase search but knowledge uncertainty had a weaker negative effect on search implications of the findings for previous research on the relationship between uncertainty and search are discussed along with research directions

explaining ijv survival in a transitional economy through social exchange and knowledge based perspectives in this study we combine social exchange and knowledge based perspectives to develop a general path model of ijv survival we further refine our expectations by considering the transitional economic context of our study and the somewhat unique managerial values resulting from the legacy of marxist ideology results from structural equation modeling suggest that an imbalance in the management control structure between the parents leads to parental conflict and an increased likelihood of ijv failure an imbalance in the ownership control structure however had no influence on conflict or survival in general support from the foreign parent is positively related to ijv learning and ijv survival however higher levels of technical support provided by the foreign parent to the ijv reduced the level of parental conflict whereas management support had no effect on conflict our results suggest some dilemmas for firms pursuing ijvs in transitional economies although the foreign parent often contributes critical resources to the ijv providing it with bargaining power and a high level of influence an imbalance in management control between the partners may ultimately be detrimental to ijv survival copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

optimal search for product information consumers often need to search for product information before making purchase decisions we consider a tractable continuous time model of gradual learning in which consumers incur search costs to learn further product information and update their expected utility of the product at each search occasion we characterize the optimal stopping rules for either purchase or no purchase as a function of search costs and of the importance informativeness of each attribute this paper also characterizes how the likelihood of purchase changes with the ex ante expected utility search costs and the importance informativeness of each attribute we discuss optimal pricing the impact of consumer search on profits and social welfare and how the seller chooses its price to strategically affect the extent of the consumers search behavior we show that lower search costs can hurt the consumer because the seller may then choose to charge higher prices discounting creates asymmetry in the purchase and no purchase search thresholds and may lead to lower prices if search occurs in equilibrium or higher prices if there is no search in equilibrium this paper also considers searching for signals of the value of the product heterogeneous importance of attributes endogenous intensity of search and social learning this paper was accepted by pradeep chintagunta marketing

network centrality and organizational aspirations a behavioral interaction in the context of international strategic alliances the authors wish to acknowledge the financial support provided by the spanish ministry of science and education under projects eco2013 48496 c4 2 r eco2013 48496 c4 4 r and eco2017 48496 c4 4 r

complementarity status similarity and social capital as drivers of alliance formation using data on u s investment banking firms syndication in underwriting corporate stock offerings during the 1980s this study explores the factors that drive alliance formation between two specific firms we compare resource complementarity status similarity and social capital as a basis of alliance formation the findings indicate that the likelihood of investment banks alliance formation is positively related to the complementarity of their capabilities as well as their status similarity social capital arising from banks direct and indirect collaborative experiences also plays a very important role in alliance formation the number of deals given by a lead bank to a potential partner over the past three years has an inverted u shaped relationship to the probability that the lead bank will invite the potential partner to form an alliance our findings indicate that status similarity and social capital have a stronger effect on alliance formation in initial public offering deals than in secondary offering deals as the former are more uncertain than the latter using these findings we discuss the role of complementarity status similarity and social capital in alliance formation copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

network location and learning the influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation this paper presents a dynamic firm level study of the role of network resources in determining alliance formation such resources inhere not so much within the firm but reside in the interfirm networks in which firms are placed data from extensive fieldwork show that by influencing the extent to which firms have access to information about potential partners such resources are an important catalyst for new alliances especially because alliances entail considerable hazards this study also assesses the importance of firms capabilities with alliance formation and material resources as determinants of their alliance decisions i test this dynamic framework and its hypotheses about the role of time varying network resources and firm capabilities with comprehensive longitudinal multi industry data on the formation of strategic alliances by a panel of firms between 1970 and 1989 the results confirm field observations that accumulated network resources arising from firm participation in the network of accumulated prior alliances are influential in firms decisions to enter into new alliances this study highlights the importance of network resources that firms derive from their embeddedness in networks for explaining their strategic behavior copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

firms home market relationships their role when selecting international alliance partners the importance of taking account of a firm s home market relationships in efforts to explain its choice of partners for international alliances is discussed liberating and moderating relationships are proposed as two alternative types of alliances that firms may form in response to the influence of home market dependencies propositions suggesting explanatory factors that predict which type of relationship is formed then are presented these propositions are based on the complementary aspects of transaction cost theory the network approach and resource dependence theory

the economics of consumer knowledge while approaches to measuring the state of a consumer s knowledge are well developed much less is known about the relationship between knowledge and consumer choice and information search the purpose of this article is to explore these relationships by treating consumer knowledge as human capital which affects the full price of consumption and search activities using this framework models are presented to explain life cycle consumption patterns lifestyles brand loyalty choice of features and search behavior this economic perspective is compared and contrasted to other consumer research on these topics including recent qualitative research that examines consumption behavior

the behavioural homogeneity evaluation framework multi level evaluations of consumer involvement in international segmentation this paper presents a generic strategic framework of alternative international marketing strategies and market segmentation based on intra and inter cultural behavioural homogeneity consumer involvement ci is proposed as a pivotal construct to capture behavioural homogeneity for the identification of market segments results from a five country study demonstrate how the strategic framework can be valuable in managerial decision making first there is evidence for the cultural invariance of the measurement of ci allowing a true comparison of inter and intra cultural behavioural homogeneity second ci influences purchase behaviour and its evaluation provides a rich source of information for responsive market segmentation finally a decomposition of behavioural variance suggests that national cultural environment and nationally transcendent variables explain differences in behaviour the behavioural homogeneity evaluation framework therefore suggests appropriate international marketing strategies providing practical guidance for implementing involvement contingent strategies 2007 academy of international business all rights reserved

willingness to pay for renewable energy investment in korea a choice experiment study abstract renewable energy sources are considered as alternatives for coping with the high price of oil and global warming the korean government has set a target that 11 of the total primary energy supply should be obtained through renewable energy sources until 2030 in order to develop proper policies for renewable energy investment it is necessary to analyze the benefits of renewable energy investment based on households willingness to pay this study attempts to apply a choice experiment ce for assessing renewable energy investment in korea moreover we employ a multinomial probit mnp model to relax the assumption that all respondents have the same preferences for the attributes being valued which is usually required in empirical ce studies an mnp model allows the most flexible pattern of error correlation structure the results reveal that the korean public puts a value on the protection of wildlife reduction of pollution and increased employment opportunities on the other hand respondents do not derive significant values from the improvement of landscapes this study is expected to provide policy makers with useful information for evaluating and planning policies related to renewable energy investment

social ties and foreign market entry the social dynamics which precede international exchange are considered in light of data collected on 133 foreign market entries from a sample of highly internationalized manufacturing firms consistent with research done in the social network field the findings support the hypothesis that knowledge of foreign market opportunities is commonly acquired via existing inter personal links rather than collected systematically via market research this study thus contributes towards an understanding of those antecedent conditions that lead to the formation of export exchange relationships

investigating the microstructure of network evolution alliance formation in the mobile communications industry theories of network evolution frequently focus on network endogeneity which stresses predictable path dependent evolution rooted in previous network structure however theories of technological evolution and innovation remind us that networks may undergo significant change as technological discontinuities exert pressures on existing relationships and firms engage in exploratory search how can we incorporate sources of change into our theories of network evolution instead of focusing so squarely on sources of inertia by using recent advances in graph theory we develop a more flexible theory of network evolution by examining two patterns of partner selection that have the potential to change networks shortcut formation between relatively unconnected partner clusters and the entry of new firms into the main component of incumbent partners our findings suggest an important contingency for the endogeneity perspective structural homophily predicts shortcut formation but not alliance formation within clusters furthermore we demonstrate that the pattern of alliance formation between incumbents and new entrants to the alliance network is driven by a combination of endogenous and exogenous mechanisms new entrants attach to more prominent incumbents but they are more likely to attach with an alliance deal that comprises multiple partners we demonstrate these findings in an industry where systemic technology encourages cooperation and where network entry is prevalent the mobile communications industry from 1993 2002

a review and comparison of tests of cross section independence in panels abstract in this paper we review and compare diagnostic tests of cross section independence in the disturbances of panel regression models we examine tests based on the sample pairwise correlation coefficient or on its transformations and tests based on the theory of spacings the ultimate goal is to shed some light on the appropriate use of existing diagnostic tests for cross equation error correlation our discussion is supported by means of a set of monte carlo experiments and a small empirical study on health results show that tests based on the average of pairwise correlation coefficients work well when the alternative hypothesis is a factor model with non zero mean loadings tests based on spacings are powerful in identifying various forms of strong cross section dependence but have low power when they are used to capture spatial correlation

what differences in the cultural backgrounds of partners are detrimental for international joint ventures an international joint venture implies that a firm has to cooperate with a partner with a different cultural background in this study hypotheses about which differences in national culture are most disruptive for international joint ventures were developed and tested using hofstede s five dimensions the study focused on how these dimensions affect the survival of international joint ventures as well as their incidence relative to wholly owned subsidiaries the hypotheses were tested on longitudinal data about 828 foreign entries of twenty five dutch multinational in seventy two countries between 1966 and 1994 the database which spans almost three decades was also used to provide new evidence on a key assumption of hofstede s work that cultural values are stable over time

an institutional approach to cross national distance cross national distance is a key concept in the field of management previous research has conceptualized and measured cross national differences mostly in terms of dyadic cultural distance and has used the euclidean approach to measuring it in contrast our goal is to disaggregate the construct of distance by proposing a set of multidimensional measures including economic financial political administrative cultural demographic knowledge and global connectedness as well as geographic distance we ground our analysis and choice of empirical dimensions on institutional theories of national business governance and innovation systems in order to overcome the methodological limitations of the euclidean approach we calculate dyadic distances using the mahalanobis method which is scale invariant and takes into consideration the variance covariance matrix we empirically analyze four different foreign expansion choices of us companies to illustrate the importance of disaggregating the distance construct and the usefulness of our distance calculations which we make freely available to managers and scholars

an empirical two stage choice model with varying decision rules applied to internet clickstream data abstract in this article the author proposes and applies an empirical two stage choice model to internet clickstream data that captures observed choices for two choice stages products viewed and products purchased the model allows for interdependences between choices within a stage as well as the use of varying decision rules in each stage the author accommodates heterogeneity in preferences and in decision rules the proposed model uses observed choices to infer both attribute preference ratings and criterion attributes the results show empirically in a field setting that the product attributes evaluated in stage 1 differ from those evaluated in stage 2 consistent with existing theory consumers tend to use simpler decision rules based on a subset of attribute information in earlier stages the author also finds some preliminary evidence that attributes such as price and size tend to be considered in only one of the two stages whereas ingredient attributes tend to be considered in both stages f

the duality of collaboration inducements and opportunities in the formation of interfirm linkages i argue that the linkage formation propensity of firms is explained by simultaneously examining both inducement and opportunity factors drawing upon resource based and social network theory literatures i identify three forms of accumulated capital technical commercial and social that can affect a firm s inducements and opportunities to form linkages firms possessing these capital stocks enjoy advantages in linkages formation however firms lacking these accumulated resources can still form linkages if they generate a radical technological breakthrough thus i identify paths to linkage formation for leading as well as peripheral firms i test these arguments with longitudinal data on technical collaborative linkages in the global chemicals industry copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

change in domestic network centrality uncertainty and the foreign divestment decisions of firms abstract we investigate the role of domestic interfirm networks for the foreign divestment decisions of firms we argue that firms foreign operations risk being divested when a firm becomes more central in its domestic network positive changes in firm centrality at home facilitate access to information about new business opportunities but they may also lead firms to consider reconfiguring their value chain activities and resources across locations the resulting opportunity costs of maintaining foreign operations could subsequently lead to their divestment moreover we argue that the positive association between an increase in firm centrality in the domestic network and foreign divestment is stronger under higher uncertainty as pursuing new business opportunities at home becomes more appealing we distinguish between firm specific uncertainty and domestic market uncertainty we test and get support for our hypotheses using foreign subsidiary data from u s firms in the ict industry

random coefficient models for stated preference surveys abstract this paper combines the use of random coefficient discrete choice models that allow for correlated errors in the form of unobserved preference heterogeneity with an investigation of the reliability and usefulness of rankings data for the data we examine we find significant unobserved preference heterogeneity in the rankings which violates the underlying assumptions of the rank ordered logit model further directly modeling unobserved preference heterogeneity results in significant improvement in the precision of the parameter estimates and in estimated willingness to pay wtp the reliability and usefulness of rankings data should be re examined with econometric models not subject to the independence of irrelevant alternatives iia

willingness to pay estimation with choice based conjoint analysis addressing extreme response behavior with individually adapted designs the increasing consideration of behavioral aspects in operations management models has prompted greater use of choice based conjoint cbc studies in operations research such studies can elicit consumers willingness to pay wtp a core input for many optimization models however optimization models can yield valid results only if consumers wtp is estimated accurately a simulation study and two field studies show that extreme response behavior in cbc studies such that consumers always or never choose the no purchase option harms the validity of wtp estimates reporting the share of consumers who always and never select the no purchase option allows for detecting extreme response behavior this study suggests an individually adapted design that avoids extreme response behavior and thus significantly improves wtp estimation accuracy

the network dynamics of international new ventures this study uses multi site case research to advance a set of propositions regarding the network dynamics of early stage international new ventures the investigative approach builds on arguments that network theory and analysis are fundamental to international entrepreneurship in the spirit of cross disciplinary research perspectives from the entrepreneurship literature are embraced to help inform our understanding of international new venture networks

valuation for renewable energy a comparative review abstract environmental cost benefit analysis is applied for the evaluation of renewable energy projects since some benefits and costs do not have monetary values economic valuation techniques are applied to estimate them this paper reviews the literature on the valuation evaluation of renewable energy resources and summarizes the methods used in them it discerns four main streams of valuation in renewable energy the first is economic welfare oriented and comprises stated and revealed preference methods the second is the financial option analysis with a financial background the third is emergy analysis which is mostly an ecological engineering based method with capable economic links and the fourth is again economic but not welfare based the paper discusses the main directions discerned in these studies and recognizes first that proper valuation takes place only in the first method while the other methods describe only evaluation procedures and second that there is a research gap that has yet to be filled in as compared to other areas of environmental resource and energy economics

building capabilities for international operations through networks a study of indian firms in this study we seek to explain how firms from emerging markets build capabilities to operate in international markets through learning from parental networks the building of these capabilities is of particular interest as firms from emerging markets may not necessarily possess the monopolistic advantages commonly referred to in ib literature which allow a firm to succeed in international markets using lagged cross sectional regression models on a sample of 794 indian firms we found that firms draw on the international experience of their parental and foreign networks to build such capabilities findings also indicate that network scope is beneficial for increasing exposure to international markets only in the case of networks that are either small or medium sized additionally we found that firms lacking market power in their home market benefit through foreign partnerships when internationalizing operations

schooling health knowledge and obesity the connection between schooling and health is well documented an important empirical issue that needs to be examined however is whether schooling s effects are due to individual health knowledge differences this empirical study examines this issue with an increasingly important health indicator obesity since provision of health knowledge is a major tool of public agencies promoting health this empirical study uses a new direct measure of health knowledge to test this hypothesis the results show that knowledge is inversely related to the probability that an individual is obese schooling s effects on relative weight and the probability of being obese are explained by differences in knowledge this result may imply that schooling s effect on the allocative efficiency of the household production of health is the main reason schooling is linked to health behaviour the result also may imply that the most effective method of health education is to highlight the disease element of poor dietary habits a

a consumer perspective on price matching refund policies effect on price perceptions and search behavior although price matching refund policies are common in many retail environments the impact of such policies on consumers has largely been ignored this article reports the results of three studies that examine price matching policies from a consumer perspective study 1 shows that consumers perceive price matching policies as signals of low store prices and that the presence of a refund increases the likelihood of discontinuing price search contrary to the predictions based on signaling theory in information economics studies 2 and 3 show that when search costs are low the number of stores searched increases in the presence versus absence of a price matching policy when search costs are high consumers appear to accept the price matching signal at face value and search less in the presence of a refund the article concludes by discussing the theoretical implications of the findings and suggesting directions for future research

dynamics of energy technologies and global change technological choices largely determine the long term characteristics of industrial society including impacts on the natural environment however the treatment of technology in existing models that are used to project economic and environmental futures remains highly stylized based on work over two decades at iiasa we present a useful typology for technology analysis and discuss methods that can be used to analyze the impact of technological changes on the global environment especially global warming our focus is energy technologies the main source of many atmospheric environmental problems we show that much improved treatment of technology is possible with a combination of historical analysis and new modeling techniques in the historical record we identify characteristic l such network e ects yield high barriers to entry even for superior competitors these simple observations allow three improvements to modeling of technological change and its consequences for global environmental change one is that the replacement of long lived infrastructures over time has also replaced the fuels that power the economy to yield progressively more energy per unit of carbon pollution from coal to oil to gas such replacement has d they also include endogenous generation of s we show that doing so can yield projections with lessened environmental impacts without necessarily incurring negative e ect on the economy arriving on that path by the year 2100 depends on intervening actions such as incentives to promote greater diversity in technology and lower barriers to entry for new infrastructures that could accelerate historical trends of decarbonization 1999 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

testing a causal model of corporate risk taking and performance the determinants of organizational risk taking and its impact on economic performance are critical issues in strategic management using a model that included risk performance performance expecta

the performance consequences of ambidexterity in strategic alliance formations empirical investigation and computational theorizing although alliance studies have generally favored an ambidextrous approach between exploration and exploitation they tend to overlook a firm s characteristics its industry constraints or the dynamic network in which the firm is embedded this study examines the ambidexterity hypothesis and its boundary conditions with a unique research method we not only analyze empirical data from five u s industries spanning eight years but also expand theoretical insights to the network level by building a computer simulation model both our empirical and simulation results reveal the contingencies of the ambidexterity hypothesis in alliance formation our findings show that although an ambidextrous formation of alliances benefits large firms a focused formation of either exploratory or exploitative alliances benefits small firms in an uncertain environment an ambidextrous formation enhances firm performance but so does a focused formation in a stable environment finally the simulation model demonstrates that a firm s centrality and structural hole positions in network relations can moderate the relationships between alliance formation choices and firm performance and that the ambidexterity hypothesis may be limited to the earlier stage of the network our study provides critical evidence into the viability of adopting a dynamic network perspective in understanding the ambidexterity hypothesis and advancing strategic alliance research beyond static and dyadic levels