Contractual strategic alliances: the relationship between the relational capability and transactions attributes and performance

Abstract

A contractual strategic alliance is a long-term cooperative relationship among autonomous firms that share complimentary resources for doing joint activities, managed by formal contract and coordination devices. This kind of hybrid organizational form turns the partner firms' boundary less defined due to bidirectional streams of information, knowledge and people and change or creation of organizational routines and capabilities. The objective of this research is to contribute for the understanding of the relationship between the relational capability and alliance transactions' attributes and performance. It was opted by the development of the research in the Brazilian pharmaceutical industry, human health segment, because of its importance, included in the PITCE - Industrial, Technological and Foreign Commerce Policy, in 2004, and by the occurrence of this kind of organizational arrangement. The research population is the set of companies that have as activities the development and/or production of medicines for human health with profit aims. Companies will be identified by the data base of ANVISA - National Agency for Sanitary Surveillance named Bulário Eletrônico, and by the bioscience company directory developed by Fundação BioMinas and PWC. It will be developed scales for measuring the constructs and primary data will be got from managers of the areas of new businesses, innovation and R&D. Data will be tabulated and analyzed via the statistical technique of Structural Equation Modeling. It is expected that results of this work favor the improvement of alliance management and the integration of the approaches of organizational economics and organizational capabilities. (AU)