Alliance experience plays a crucial role in the stage of alliance formation. However, theoretical gaps and empirical controversies exist in the analyses of its effects on alliance formation and alliance governance structure. Drawing on the method of meta-analysis, we have systematically searched and coded previous empirical studies, generating a database of 91 empirical studies in all. Through classifying alliance experience into general and partner-specific alliance experience, we seek to examine the different effects of these two types of alliance experience on alliance formation and alliance governance structure. We enrich the classification of alliance experience in terms of governance structure to address the disadvantages of this classification in explaining the resulting effects. Our research uses meta-regression to provide evidence about how contextual contingencies affect the alliance experience–alliance governance structure link.
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