Learning and Innovation Through Interfirm Alliances: The Role of Human Resource Development
The strategic importance of interfirm alliances as vehicles of knowledge acquisition and innovation has been widely acknowledged both in academic literature and in management practice. Also, human resource development (HRD) as the embodiment of learning a
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1 Introduction and Purpose Strategic alliances are interfirm collaborative relationships formed by two or more partners who pool their resources and co-ordinate their activities to reach a common goal. As heightened competition and increased interdependence means that firms are increasingly incapable of staying competitive by relying entirely on its internal resources/capabilities (Das and Teng 2000), interfirm alliances have become important strategic vehicles of maintaining competitiveness among business organisations. There are many reasons that firms form alliances. One of the most commonly cited reasons is the opportunity for interfirm learning and knowledge transfer. It is argued that strategic alliances provide means through which firms learn, transfer, share and exploit knowledge resources that are otherwise unavailable within the firm (Grant and Baden-Fuller 2004; Inkpen 1998; Lavie 2006). Literature has also shown that such externally accessed and/ O. Okonkwo (*) Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Loon et al. (eds.), The Future of HRD, Volume II, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52459-3_9
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or acquired knowledge can help firms to develop innovations that otherwise could not be done internally or to improve the quality and efficiency of innovations developed in the firm (Matinez-Noya and Narula 2018). In the innovation literature, the concept of ‘open innovation’ is used to stress the notion of leveraging external knowledge through engaging with external sources (e.g. through strategic alliances). The basic premise of the open innovation concept is the opening up of the firm’s innovation process to valuable external knowledge and ideas in order to enhance innovation capabilities (Flor et al. 2018). In fact, research and development (R&D) alliances constitute one of the typologies of strategic alliances that has been widely analysed for their pure learning and innovation focus. While the notion of alliance learning and innovation is propagated in the field of strategy and innovation, the field of human resource development (HRD) emerged with a strategic perspective on the organisation of learning and development activities. Inspired by the resource-based theory of the firm (e.g. Prahalad and Hamel 1990) and, recently, the notion of dynamic capabilities (e.g. Eisenhardt and Martin 2000), this perspective highlights the strategic importance of HRD as a tool for developing workforce capabilities, knowledge, efficiency and adaptability that enhances a firm’s competitive advantage (e.g. Mitsakis 2019; Garavan et al. 2016; Garavan 2007). However, much of the discussion about HRD and its strategic approach in organisations has been on individuals and organisations rather than on an inter-organisational level. As a tool for development of knowledge and capabilities, it is important to explore and understand what role HRD can play in inter-organisational learning and innovation through interfirm alliances. The pu
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