Meta-Analysis of Effective Factors on Selection of Macro Structural Framework in Strategic Alliances

Decision making about the structure of strategic alliances, beside the decision about goal and scope of alliance and decision about partner selection, is one of the three fundamental questions that should be addressed to form successful strategic alliances. It is believed successful alliances must accomplish two goals which both of them are related to alliance structure: coordinate the optimal combination of productive resources across parties and mitigate the risks of opportunistic behavior. Literature review reveals scattered and sometimes contradictory findings about structural framework of strategic alliances. Hence, current research is tried to provide a concluding remark of effecting factors on choosing between contractual-based and trust-based structural frameworks of strategic alliances with meta-analytics method. After reviewing and filtering of 516 scholarly papers which published in reputed scholarly international journal in a 15 years period (2002-2017), thirty eight papers were put in meta-analytics process and twenty four factors were identified. Findings from this meta-analytics showed that optimal configuration of formal and relational governance mechanisms in an alliance is contingent, and contractual-based and trust-based frameworks are complementary governance. It also showed that legal safeguard, legal system, trust, formal control and opportunism have the most effect and shared governance mechanisms has the least effect on decision about choosing between the structural frameworks of strategic alliances, among others.