The Bearable Lightness of Inter-firm Strategic Alliances: Resource-Based and Procedural Contracting

Abstract The paper inquires into how contracts can regulate the complex and uncertain matters on which strategic alliances get formed. It highlights that contracts can be ‘light’ without being mistakenly incomplete. It is argued that the contracts constituting and regulating strategic alliances are composed by an associational core, focused on resource commitments and on the specification of property rights, broadly intended; and of a belt of contractual clauses incorporating a variety of coordination mechanisms (including, and actually privileging, joint decision making procedures). The interpretive power of the framework is illustrated through the analysis of three alliance contracts.