Growth In Inter-Firm Collaborations: A Study Of Enterprising Family Smes

This dissertation investigates the enterprise-level micro-foundations of dynamic alliance portfolio management capabilities in a ubiquitous type of firm, the family firm. I set out to investigate the underlying processes that facilitate the building of dynamic alliance portfolio management capabilities, in line with the burgeoning scholarship on dynamic capabilities. The study emanates from the heightened interest pertaining to how the micro-foundations of dynamic alliance portfolio management capabilities relate to the heterogeneities in the successful enhancement of sustainable competitive growth-venturing initiatives (i.e., sustained entrepreneurial growth) of growth-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises. The study's context is multigenerational small and medium-sized family enterprises, which are labelled as - Enterprising Family SMEs (E.F.SMEs). E.F.SMEs mainly differ from traditional SMEs as pertains to their devotion towards sustaining transgenerational wealth across many generations.

The research design is based on a multiple case, inductive study, whereas the research data consists of six Finnish E.F.SMEs and thirty interviews with four senior managers from each firm. The empirical interpretations are integrated into a conceptual model that highlights the dynamics inherent in enterprise-level micro-foundations (i.e., endogenous entrepreneurial processes) related to building dynamic alliance portfolio management capabilities - to differentially enhance the success of sustained entrepreneurial growth amongst the six E.F.SMEs.

The findings suggest that E.F.SMEs possess unique abilities in strategically leveraging their seemingly inimitable intangible resources (i.e., organisational social capital) that acts as a key underlying foundational isolating mechanism in building an idiosyncratic enterprise-level micro-foundation of dynamic alliance portfolio management capabilities. This developed idiosyncrasy is herein representative of superior absorptive capacity (superior ACAP), whereby E.F.SMEs are able to more effectively manage new tacit/explicit market and technological knowledge resources. Taken together, the findings indicate that this distinctiveness enables these firms to successfully enhance their sustained entrepreneurial growth by acting ambidextrously to launch new innovative products, whilst expanding their operations in both domestic and international landscapes - in comparison to their industry counterparts/competitors.