Resource Complementarity, Market Overlap and Market Performance in the Italian Network Contracts

This study examines how resource complementarity and market overlap, alone and jointly, affect the extent to which an alliance generates positive economic returns in the case of Italian network contracts. We draw on RBV theory and we disentangle the correlation between the network market performance and resource complementarity, which captures partners’ synergistic diversity in terms of resources allocated to the network, and market overlap, which captures similar knowledge and understanding of the external environment. We also examine how market overlap, as a moderator, amplifies the positive correlation between resource complementarity and network market performance. We address our research questions by relying on an original dataset of 183 Italian network contracts that mainly involve SMEs and argue that market overlap reinforces the network firms’ ability to exploit complementary resources.