Diversity in airline alliance portfolio configuration

Alliances in the airline industry operate as a basic strategy to stimulate competition and both the number and the types of alliances have increased over time. Each airline maintains alliances simultaneously with a variable number of partners. The set of airline's alliance partners constitutes...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Cobeña Ruiz-Lopera, María del Mar, Gallego Agueda, María Ángeles, Casanueva Rocha, Cristóbal
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/167513
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/167513
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jairtraman.2018.11.004
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Diversity
Structural homophily
Complementarity
Network resources
Alliance portfolio
Descripción
Sumario:Alliances in the airline industry operate as a basic strategy to stimulate competition and both the number and the types of alliances have increased over time. Each airline maintains alliances simultaneously with a variable number of partners. The set of airline's alliance partners constitutes its alliance portfolio. A central theme of these portfolios is the way in which partner selection improve performance. Is the alliance portfolio configuration based on either similar or different partners? We examine how the differences can arise from differences between the partners themselves, from resource complementarity, and from the partners structural positions in the network. The relations between these types of differences and whether they affect firm performance are studied. Codeshare alliances established between airline companies at a global level are analyzed to establish their effects on performance. In particular, the study comprises 135 alliance portfolios all of which from major airlines. The results suggest that structural homogeneity and complementarity improve performance and that alliance portfolio diversity favors network resource complementarity.