La cartera de alianzas y su relación con la estrategia de la empresa y el proceso de internacionalización: teoría y evidencias empíricas en las industrias aeronáuticas y del transporte aéreo.

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The last three decades have witnessed a considerable development of the phenomenon of strategic alliances (Heimeriks et al., 2009). This has determined the embeddedness of many companies in networks of relationships that are fundamental to the success and survival of the company (Ahuja et al., 2012; Gulati, 1995). Depending on the level of analysis, the literature on alliances and inter-organizational relationships can be divided into two main streams: the first focuses on the individual relationship as an object of study, the second uses a network perspective to analyze the consequences of the relational position of a company on its results (Jiang et al., 2010). These two areas of research have been complemented in recent years, with increasing strength and interest, with a new stream of research focused on so-called alliance portfolios. The new line of research focused on alliance portfolios has generated an abundant literature in recent years, but despite the progress made, the literature is still quite fragmented, due, on the one hand, to the multiple issues addressed and, another part, the lack of consistency of the results obtained (de Leeuw et al., 2014; Lee et al, 2017; Parmigiani and Rivera-Santos, 2011). In the first chapter of this thesis, we will analyze the definition of the portfolio of alliances and we will propose a new definition and a systematic classification of the different types of alliance portfolio. In the second chapter, we present a comprehensive review of the literature on alliance portfolio. As a conclusion to these chapters of a theoretical nature, we have detected a series of gaps in the alliance portfolio literature that may be the subject of research. Among those gaps detected there are two on which we are going to focus. To do this, we set the following research objectives: 1) Analyze the importance of the portfolio of alliances in the internationalization of SMEs; 2) Analyze the relationship that exists between the portfolio of alliances and the strategies of the companies, considering the influence of the environment. Based on these objectives, we have carried out two empirical studies. In order to carry out these empirical works, we have selected two industries in which the use of strategic alliances and inter-organizational relations is common and frequent: the airline industry and the aeronautical industry. In the airline industry proliferate horizontal alliances between competitors, while in the aeronautical industry, vertical relationships between companies and their suppliers are more frequent. Regarding the first empirical study, through which the internationalization process of the companies and the role played by alliance portfolios is analyzed, we can affirm that the analysis of the three cases has allowed highlighting the links that take place between the personal and organizational networks, observing a sequence of their evolution. The second empirical study we have conducted provides a deeper understanding of the operational and associative strategies used in the airline industry during 2005-2015. In addition, it highlights how associative behavior represents a fundamental complement to these strategies.

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