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In research and development (R&D) alliances, the partner firms must balance the tension between knowledge sharing and knowledge leakages because knowledge sharing, designed to support the alliance's technology development goals, can often lead to unintended and potentially damaging knowledge leakages. Governance structure is a well-understood knowledge protection strategy designed to reduce knowledge leakage concerns and thereby encourage desired knowledge transfers in two-party R&D alliances. Whether governance structure can be an important balancing mechanism for R&D alliances with multiple partner firms, or multilateral R&D alliances, however, requires further study. Because increasing the number of alliance partners introduces additional complexities to managing an alliance, the appropriate governance mechanism for a multilateral R&D alliance is likely to differ from that for a bilateral alliance. Drawing insights from social exchange theory, we explore governance decisions in multilateral R&D alliances. First, we examine the potential for variance between multilateral and bilateral R&D alliances in governance decisions as a means of knowledge sharing and knowledge protection. Results based on our analysis of 2,423 R&D alliances, 1,690 bilateral and 733 multilateral, are consistent with predictions drawn from social exchange theory. We next focus on three-partner R&D alliances, or trilateral R&D alliances, and compare governance mechanisms between two types of trilateral R&D alliances: chain and net. We find that equity governance structures are more likely to be used in net-based than in chain-based trilateral R&D alliances; we also find that alliance scope moderates the relationship between the type of alliance and governance structure. Finally, we find that multilateral R&D alliances with predicted (aligned) governance structures perform better, in terms of alliance longevity, than those with misaligned structures.

Research summary This conceptual article discusses when and why family firms are motivated to engage in entrepreneurial activities. Drawing on family development theory, we offer midrange reasoning about the impact of enterprising family dynamics—such as the birth of a child or children leaving home—on the motivation for corporate venturing and its changes over time. Moreover, our model also accounts for the contingent effect of ownership and business developmental dimensions. Finally, we predict that motivation for corporate venturing can, in turn, spur the development of the enterprising family. Managerial summary Overcoming the idea that family firms are either very or minimally entrepreneurial, we focus on the enterprising family and consider its development to explain the motivation toward corporate venturing. We look at the evolution of the roles and norms of family members over time and predict that motivation for venturing increases with family growth until the moment in which a succession takes place and the younger generation receives the baton. We also consider how changes in the ownership structure and business growth influence the relationship between family development and motivation for venturing. The latter, in turn, can trigger the development of the enterprising family itself, with its structure and norms. Our work, in sum, depicts the enterprising family as a springboard for repeated acts of entrepreneurship across generations. Copyright © 2016 Strategic Management Society.

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Research suggests that entrepreneurs tend to seek to maximize utility when considering whether to pursue a new venture opportunity. However, when choosing whether to persist with their current venture or not, utility maximization may not be of primary importance. Using a conjoint experiment, this article examines the difference between policies in start-up decisions versus persistence decisions. The analysis of the decisions of 135 entrepreneurs indicates that the manner in which entrepreneurs use expectancy and value in persistence decision policies is significantly different to the way that they use expectancy and value in general opportunity pursuit decision policies. The results offer novel insights into the entrepreneurial decision-making process.