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when the partners come together to combine skills to accomplish a project. The other type
of symmetrical learning, mutual learning, is where each partner tries to learn skills from
each other. For example “we take from you and we give to you; you take from us and give
to us” (Huxham & Hibbert, 2008, p. 521). The competitive type occurs when alliance
partners are in direct competition with each other (Tsang, 1999). The opposite of this is the
non-competitive type, where partners want to develop their skills in their respective areas.
However, no matter how little or how much each partner learns they should have learned
something from being involved in an alliance (Contractor & Lorange, 2002).
The dynamics between alliance partners influences knowledge transfer (Easterby-
Smith et al., 2008). Given that the KBV assumes that knowledge resides within individuals,
it is therefore important to consider the relationships that exist between members of
different organisations as a precursor to understanding issues of knowledge transfer (Bell &
Zaheer, 2007). The influence of social networks on the knowledge transfer process is well
established (Wijk et al., 2008). As one might expect, it almost inevitable that conflict is a
natural bedfellow of alliances (Kale et al., 2000). Darby (2006) explains that significant
levels of trust and strong positive relationships between people in each of the alliance
organisations are almost certain to have been common features of nearly every successful
alliance.
Relationship capital is an important facilitator of knowledge transfer between
organisations (Sarkar, Cavusgil, & Aulakh, 2001; Yan, 2004). In the context of alliances,
relationship capital is comprised of mutual trust, respect and friendship between individuals
in alliances and is a consequence of “the close interaction at the personal level between
partners” (Kale et al., 2000, p. 221). In their meta analysis, Wijk et al. (2008) indentified
clear evidence that trust and strong relations, as represented by the term relationship capital
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