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Heimeriks (2010) "Confident or competent? How to avoid superstitious learning in alliance portfolios

14 important questions on Heimeriks (2010) "Confident or competent? How to avoid superstitious learning in alliance portfolios

How are strategic alliances defined?

As temporary cooperative agreements in which two or more firms share reciprocal inputs in order to realize improved competitive positions, while maintaining their own corporate identities

What is the question this study seeks to answer?

What (groups of) learning mechanisms are likely to foster superstitious learning in alliances portfolios?

What are the two distinct learning processes that firms use to improve their ability to manage alliance portfolios?

  1. Experiential learning
  2. Deliberate learning
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Why do firms invest in deliberate learning?

To gain a better understanding of underlying cause and effect relationships, and to make more effective use of their experiences

When does superstitious learning occur?

When the subjective experience of learning is compelling, but the connections between actions and outcomes are mis-specified

How is such superstition nurtured?

By routine behavior that is based upon incorrect or incomplete causal links

What looms particularly large for firms with alliance portfolios of substantial size?

Overconfidence, or excessive levels of confidence relative to actual level of experience and competence

Which two different groups are studied to examine the potential origins of superstitious learning in alliance portfolios?

  • Integrating mechanisms
  • Institutionalizing mechanisms

What do integrating mechanisms?

They help firms share individually held knowledge in groups; such as social interaction is critical to generate variation in extant practices, as these mechanisms help feed-forward new insights

What do institutionalizing mechanims?

They help routinize behavior and decision-making in alliance portfolios; these processes function as feedback loops to help spread standardized practices throughout the organization

What are the four main lessons that can be derived from the findings of this study?

  1. Invest in deliberate learning
  2. Balance the use of integrating and institutionalizing mechanisms
  3. Learn to experiment
  4. Make managers accountable

What about invest in deliberate learning?

Both trial-and-error (or experiential) and deliberate learning using integrating mechanisms greatly enhance the chances of success when managing alliance portfolios. The results suggest that firms that invest in deliberate learning outperform those that do not.

What about balance the use between integrating and institutionalizing mechanisms?

Balancing the use of integrating and institutionalizing mechanisms is important to avoid overconfidence in alliance portfolio management. Results prove it is easy to over-invest in the latter type of mechanisms, consequently nurturing confidence over competence. In practice, this means that firms managing large alliance portfolios will have to resist relying too much on standardized, predefined lessons spread throughout the company, without allowing individual employees to alter decision-making and behavior dependent on contextual forces.

What about make managers accountable?

Using aspirations and goals to make managers accountable. The goals may be constructed so as to allow for variation in behavior. In this way firms can avoid overconfidence among managers by deliberately allowing for failures. If productive mistakes are tolerated, after which lessons can then be shared, superstition is less likely to occur as managers are given room to incrementally experiment.

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