Knowledge Creation in Strategic Alliance: Case of ‘Child Business’ Learning from ‘Parent Partner’

Alliance is becoming an essential feature in today’s intensely competitive market as a means of facilitating market entry, acquiring new technology, leveraging economies of scale, and enhancing new product development capabilities.Recently, alliances have been linked to the organizational learning literature where alliances create environments for learning and knowledge transfer. This phenomenon is the main purpose of this paper, where it will define and discuss the key facilitating learning elements in strategic alliances. The study used an in-depth case study method. Two respondent organizations were used to gather data for the purpose of the study. One case was from the manufacturing sector and the other is from the service sector. Both entered into alliances with learning from foreign parent partner as one of the key objectives. The final part of the paper will summarize the findings and suggest key elements promoting learning from foreign parent partner to the ‘child businesses in the case of international strategic alliance which include learning as one of their alliance objectives