Managing Alliances with Key Clients and Knowledge Acquisition

This chapter discusses interfirm knowledge acquisition within strategic alliances. Focusing on buy-seller relationships, it assesses the extent to which a firm is able to discover its key clients’ deceitful behavior and how this promotes knowledge acquisition. Information sharing among supplier firms concerning the misbehavior of their common clients was also tested. An analysis of data collected from 2,165 manufacturing firms across ten industries in China showed that a firm’s ability to effectively detect its clients’ misconduct correlates strongly with interfirm knowledge acquisition. The strength of this relationship depends on the extent of information sharing among peer firms about their common clients