Motivations for Environmental Alliances: Generating and Internalizing Environmental and Knowledge Value

• Published date: 01 October 2020
• Author: Eva Niesten,Albert Jolink
• Date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12228

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 22, 356–377 (2020)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12228

Motivations for Environmental Alliances:

Generating and Internalizing

Environmental and Knowledge Value

Eva Niesten and Albert Jolink 1

Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Booth Street West,Manchester, M15 6PB, UK

1SKEMA Business School – Universit´

eC

ˆ

ote d’Azur, Pˆ

ole Universitaire L´

eonard de Vinci, Espl. Mona Lisa,

Courbevoie, 92400, France

Corresponding author email: eva.niesten@manchester.ac.uk

Environmental alliances are a common response to societal sustainability demands.

In environmental alliances, firms collaboratively exploit and explore environmental

technologies to address market opportunities while simultaneously generating positive

environmental impacts. A striking idiosyncrasy is that in addition to economic value,

environmentalalliances generate two types of external value: environmentalvalue from

positive effects on air, water, land and biodiversity, and knowledge value from inno-

vations in environmental technologies. Research on motivations for environmental al-

liances is dispersed and underdeveloped compared to the well-established literature on

motivations for strategic alliances that emphasize economic value. This study there-

fore develops a classification of motivations for environmental alliances by combining

the literature on strategic alliances and that on environmental and knowledge value.

The resulting classification includes motivationsfor environmental alliances to generate

environmental and knowledge value as well as motivations to create economic value

by internalizing environmental and knowledge value. A systematic review of 123 ar-

ticles on environmental inter-firm alliances identifies specific motivations to populate

the new classification. We show that alliance partners are motivated to share sustain-

able resources, reduce sustainability risk, respond to stakeholders or invest in specific

sustainable assets to generate external value. They collaborate to reduce costs or en-

hance competitive advantage,reputation or legitimacy to internalize external value. The

resource-based view, resource-dependence view, institutional theory and transaction

cost economics have not previously distinguished between motivations to generate and

internalize external value. We extend their area of application from strategic alliances

to environmental alliances, and thus beyondthe exclusive pursuit of economic value.

Introduction

The literature on strategic alliances has identified sev-

eral motivations for inter-firm collaboration (Ari˜

no

2003; Christoffersen 2013; Christoffersen et al.

2014), including sharing risks and costs, combining

complementary resources and competences, access-

ing markets and product domains, and creating legit-

imacy for partner firms (Dacin et al. 2007; Das and

Teng2000; Jolink and Niesten 2012). Despite this va-

riety of motivations, the strategy literature identifies

the creation of economic value as the ultimate and

exclusive objective for the alliance and its partners

(Lavie 2007; Madhok and Tallman 1998; Nickerson

et al. 2007).

However, recent discussions on value creation by

inter-firm alliances aimed at green and sustainable

products identify stakeholders beyond the boundaries

of the alliance who benefit from the alliance (e.g.

Volschenk et al. 2016) and thereby propose a new field

of enquiry that centres on the differences between in-

ternal (to the alliance) value and external value. In

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Motivations for Environmental Alliances 357

this paper, we move these discussions forward by fo-

cusing on ‘environmental value’ and ‘environmental

knowledge value’ as two types of external valuegen-

erated by inter-firm alliances. Environmental value

refers to positive environmental contributions such as

benefits to air, water,land and biodiversity (Meyskens

and Carsrud 2013). Environmental knowledge value

results from the innovative nature of environmental

technologies (e.g. Ning and Wang2018) and refers to

knowledge of environmental technologies that spills

over to other firms and society at large (De Marchi

2012).

Alliances that aim for environmental or knowledge

value, in addition to economic value, are referred to

as environmental alliances (Lin 2012a,b). Rather than

focusing exclusivelyon economic value, as is the case

for strategic alliances, environmentalalliances ‘create

economic value by exploiting new market opportuni-

ties while simultaneously seeking to generate positive

environmentalimpacts’ (Wassmer et al. 2014, p. 757).

Extending value creation beyond the economic realm

raises questions about what motivates alliance part-

ners to generate environmental or knowledge value

(Meyskens and Carsrud 2013; Weber et al. 2017). At

the same time, it raises questions about what different

alliance motivations exist to internalize some of the

external value, or in other words, to create economic

value by capitalizing on the environmental or knowl-

edge value that has been jointly generated (Mailath

et al. 2004).

This study analyses the motivations for environ-

mental alliances considering environmental, knowl-

edge and economic value and makes several contri-

butions to the literature on alliances. First, we develop

a new classification of motivations for environmen-

tal alliances by combining the literature on motiva-

tions for strategic alliances and its focus on economic

value with the literature on environmental and knowl-

edge value. The classification distinguishes between

motivations for environmental alliances to generate

environmental or knowledge value and motivations

to create economic value by internalizing environ-

mental or knowledge value. Our systematic review

of 123 articles identifies specific motivations for en-

vironmental inter-firm alliances to populate the four

categories in the new classification.

Second, we contribute to the literature on al-

liance motivations that relies on different theories,

including the resource-based view (RBV), resource-

dependence view (RDV),institutional theory (IT) and

transaction cost economics (TCE). Each of these the-

ories has identified a set of alliance motivations to

create economic value. Our study shows that these

sets can be differentiated into motivations to gen-

erate environmental and knowledge value and mo-

tivations to create economic value by internalizing

environmental and knowledge value. For instance,

articles in our review adopting the RBV show that

alliance partners share sustainable resources to gen-

erate environmental value while they collaborate for

competitive advantage to internalize environmental

value. Similarly, articles using IT show that alliance

partners respond to stakeholder pressures to generate

environmental value while they collaborate for legit-

imacy to internalize environmental value. Our study

shows that these theories with explanatory power for

strategic alliances also have explanatory power for

environmental alliances.

Third, this study enhances our understanding of

inter-firm alliances by showing that economic value

can be generated both internally and by internalizing

external value. In other words, capitalizing on the

jointly generated environmental and knowledge

value can create economic value. This study helps

us understand when and how firms and their al-

liance partners are motivated to generate positive

environmental impacts.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. First,

the theory section discusses the literature on alliances,

motivations and value and develops the new classi-

fication of motivations for environmental alliances.

Second, the method section offers insights into the

screening, selecting and synthesizing of the litera-

ture. Third, the results section uses evidence from

the reviewed articles to identify specific motivations

and populate the new classification. Finally, the dis-

cussion section explains our contributions and offers

suggestions for future research.

Theory: Generating and internalizing

value by environmental alliances

Inter-firm alliances and economic value

Studies within the strategy literature define inter-

firm alliances differently but often with some overlap

(Buckley and Casson 1989). The common elements

in these definitions (e.g. Das and Teng 2000; Dyer

et al. 2018; Gulati and Singh 1998; Zollo et al. 2002)

have led us to define an inter-firm alliance as avol-

untary cooperative agreement between firms aimed

at the development, manufacture and/or distribution

of products or services in which partners contribute

C2020 The Authors. International Journal of Management Reviews publishedby British Academy of Management and John

Wiley & Sons Ltd.