Top management staffing in international strategic alliances: a conceptual explanation of decision perspective and objective formation

Past research in the international collaborative strategy area has paid little attention to the matter of alliance staffing, limiting insight into conditions framing the adoption of alternative management staffing approaches. Following a thorough conceptualisation of staffing objectives and perspectives, this paper takes a theoretical approach to analyse the forces shaping managerial perspectives on international strategic alliance (ISA) top management staffing, drawing on a diverse range of literature and employing examples to provide illustrative grounding for our assertions. We suggest that risk perceptions are fundamental to parent firms' choice of staffing objectives, but are stimulated and tempered by other influences. Theory development on ISA management staffing is enhanced through the provision of a substantive, testable model along with a set of research propositions. The complex analytic focus of this study exposes important directions for research on the subject and offers guidelines for management practice. Furthermore, our typology of managerial decision perspectives provides a new tool for studying ISA staffing issues.