Our study addresses two main questions: First, what types of alliances do firms tend to create when combining different kinds of resources? Second, what governance mechanisms do firms set up to coordinate and protect resources when they use them for different alliances? We examine 227 alliances...

Though alliances and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are both extensively used by companies seeking to achieve the benefits of greater size and scale, strategy research has rarely examined these two moves as alternative courses of action. Indeed, the size-performance relationship has long been a...