Alliance management capability: overcoming asset specificity, measurement difficulty, and the dark side of long-standing ties

The relational view asserts that relational rents are achieved when assets are specific, difficult to measure, exchanged frequently over long periods of time, and safeguarded through informal means. Research within transaction cost economics, however, indicates that the effectiveness of relational governance may deteriorate under these same conditions. How then, do organisations leverage relational governance to mitigate exchange hazards and secure relational rents? We develop a conceptual model of alliance exchange performance and posit that alliance management capability enhances the effectiveness of relational governance. Our model contributes to the alliance literature by clarifying construct ambiguities surrounding alliance management capability and elucidates the beneficial countervailing effects of an organisation's alliance management capability with asset specificity, measurement difficulty, and long-standing ties. Importantly, we extend previous research that describes how resource endowments and contracting capabilities influence the effectiveness of formal governance and explore how resources and capabilities might interact with relational governance.