Innovation And Change In The Process Of Alliance Formation In The Japanese Electronics Industry

This paper examines the changing process of strategic alliance formation in the Japanese electronics industry between 1985 and 1998. With data on 128 Japanese electronics/electrical machinery makers, the authors use a dyad panel regression methodology to address a series of hypotheses drawn from embeddedness and strong/weak tie theory on how keiretsu and prior alliance networks have constrained partner choice in new R&D and nonR&D alliances. They argue and find that the keiretsu effect is smaller on R&D than non R&D alliances, and that this is truer of the "Weaker-tie" horizontal keiretsu than the "Stronger-tie" vertical keiretsu. Dividing the time series into four periods (1984-88, 89-90, 91-94, 95-98), however, reveals some important variations in the keiretsu role over time.