5. Discussion and conclusion
In line with our theoretical expectations, we found a U-shaped relationship between API and firm performance in the context of exploitation alliances. Compared to the study of Lavie and Miller (2008), we did not experience a drop of the performance at high levels of portfolio internationalization. We suggest this is due to the characteristic of exploitation alliances. Their focus on the utilization of existing knowledge and the possibility to standardize alliances opens the potential to profit from diverse resources without experiencing dramatically rising coordination costs. Furthermore, similar U-shaped impacts on performances were found for other forms of partner characteristics like network diversity (Goerzen and Beamish, 2005) or industry diversity ( Jiang et al., 2010). This reinforces our assumption that diverse alliance portfolios are difficult and costly to manage, but do have immense potential for receiving benefits if the coordination task is done properly (Cui and O’Connor, 2012). Firms have to develop certain capabilities and routines to manage alliances successfully. Gaining experience through international collaborations is helpful for that (Reuer et al., 2002). Entering alliances with partners from diverse countries is one method to overcome the liabilities of foreignness over the course of time. Our findings contribute to the strategic alliance literature in several ways. We demonstrated that exploitation alliances possess unique performance implications. Previous studies mainly concentrated on exploration portfolios and claimed that their results are valid for all types of alliances. However, the strategic positioning of a firm affects the performance implications of alliance portfolios (Martynov, 2017).
