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Access Type
WSU Access
Date of Award
January 2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Management and Information Systems
First Advisor
Anand Jha
Abstract
This dissertation consists of two essays investigating the factors that influence the formation of strategic alliances. The first essay explores how penalties for corporate misconduct affect firms’ propensity to engage in strategic alliances. The findings indicate that firms increase their participation in strategic alliances following the imposition of misconduct penalties. Specifically, the likelihood of firms entering at least one alliance in the subsequent year increases from 5% to nearly 18% after a penalty. The positive correlation holds consistently across different measures of strategic alliances and corporate misconduct, the uses of instrumental variables, two quasi-natural experiments, Heckman selection and Heckman IV models, as well as the inclusion of various internal and external factors and alternative sample-matching methods. Notably, the positive association between corporate misconduct and strategic alliances is more pronounced for firms with high corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings, suggesting that reputational concerns may drive this behavior. Additionally, while the market tends to react negatively to penalized firms, alliance partners of these firms experience positive market reactions during the announcement period, implying that these partners may secure more favorable terms in such alliances.The second essay examines the impact of climate policy uncertainty (CPU) on the formation of climate-related strategic alliances. This study utilizes data on more than 28,000 strategic alliances formed by publicly traded firms from 1990 to 2023 and employs a large language model (LLM) to classify whether each alliance is related to climate issues. The analysis reveals that CPU is positively associated with firms forming climate-related strategic alliances. This positive association is more pronounced among firms in carbon-intensive industries and those with greater exposure to climate risk. It is also stronger for firms with high CSR scores, especially when the CSR related to environmental responsibility is high. An analysis of cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) around the announcement of climate-related alliances shows that shareholders respond positively, suggesting these alliances create value for shareholders. Overall, this research provides evidence that strategic alliances can act as a tool for hedging risks associated with climate policy uncertainty.
Recommended Citation
Tran, Viet, "Essays On The Drivers Of Strategic Alliances" (2025). Wayne State University Dissertations. 4270.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/4270