Dynamic game analysis on knowledge-sharing and knowledge-spillover in competitive alliances

The competitive strategic alliances, a kind of coopetition relations in one-organization innovation and the cross-organizations, has become an important method for modern enterprises to gain profits by superiority from both cooperation and competition. This paper discusses the sharing of mutually-complementary knowledge resources across organizations in the competitive strategic alliance as well as the conditions of maintaining their cooperation. With the game theory, the study mainly focuses on the knowledge sharing level and the sharing cost effect and their influences on the decision-making of the whole alliances and every alliance member from two stages. The result indicates that, under the Nash balanced condition, the knowledge sharing level increases along with the expansion of the sharing cost effect. The optimum knowledge sharing coefficient is in directly proportional to the structure of the marginal cost of the whole alliances and every alliance member; it is inversely proportional to the every alliance member´s absorption coefficient on knowledge shared; it is in inversely proportional to the investment cost paid by every alliance member on acquire knowledge.