Purpose
Organizations need to find ways to survive in unpredictable, dynamic and rapidly changing environments. The development of organizational capabilities, such as relational, is a dynamic process of adaptation, which seeks to adjust to an unstable environment. Within this context, the purpose of this paper is to analyze, through a systematic review (SR), 36 articles, which discuss the influence of strategic alliances on the dynamic capabilities (DCs) process.
Design/methodology/approach
Through this systematic literature review, articles published in international journals were categorized in terms of their objectives, thematic axes and the research methodologies applied and evidences, to explore their methodological, theoretical and organizational practice contributions.
Findings
The results clarified the antecedents, implications and relevance of the relationship between strategic alliances in different countries and their DCs. The findings make it possible to determine directions for new studies that may support the advancement of this field of research.
Research limitations/implications
Studies from this SR point out that alliance is: a flexible vehicle of learning; a way to transfer effective knowledge in partner firms and to generate combinations of resources; and a superior means of access to technological capabilities and other complex capabilities. Those aspects would be difficult to be developed in the firms without the help of partnerships. This can encourage the reconfiguration of existing resources and capabilities. These reconfigurations can lead to deliberate evolutionary adaptations in these firms, which will build relational DCs.
Practical implications
As managerial implications, an alliance allows for the development of capabilities to detect new opportunities, and for the development of the reconfiguration or expansion of the existing resource base in the firm. Thus, alliances, once properly managed and with well-defined structure and purpose, can help firms achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Alliances can serve as a type of strategic choice or an alternative that can enable companies to cope with unstable, global and competitive environments permeated by (new) threats and opportunities.
Originality/value
This SR paper highlighted, in a specific and consistent topic, the suggestions for future research related to the process of DCs and its relationship with strategic alliances, motivating new research works.
Este artigo procura destacar, por meio de uma revisão da literatura, a importância da internacionalização da estratégia das empresas e o papel da família do trabalhador no exterior, o expatriado, no processo de seu ajustamento ao novo ambiente. Sendo o ajustamento um fator importante para o sucesso da estratégia de internacionalização, discute-se a importância da internacionalização e da expatriação, a natureza da atividade do expatriado para as empresas, os desafios a serem enfrentados e o papel da família no processo de ajustamento. Conclui-se que a família é fundamental neste ajustamento, sendo apresentadas algumas sugestões de pesquisas a serem realizadas, bem como possíveis hipóteses a serem testadas.
Studies on dynamic managerial capabilities still have a rather theoretical nature, and there is great difficulty in finding a valid, reliable instrument to measure this construct. The present study contributes to solving this problem: It aims to develop and validate a scale to measure dynamic managerial capabilities. In this investigation, we develop a scale for three factors related to dynamic managerial capabilities: human capital, managerial cognition (already described in the literature), and relationship networks. The prominent finding in this research is the factor that is referred to here as relationship networks.
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