• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.45-61
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• 2022

Despite of the consensus on the critical role of CEO and slack resources for strategic decision making, how they affect in the selection of strategic alliance type is limited. This study investigated the effect of CEO's experiential attributes and the venture firms' slack resource on the selection of strategic alliance type. To this end, this study used multi-variate logistic regression analysis with 1,813 Korean venture firms. The findings indicated that higher education level and large firm experience of CEO positively contributed to form an explorative alliance. And these two experiential attributes has negative effects on the probability of exploitative alliance formation. On the other hand, the entrepreneurial experience has no effect on the selection of strategic alliance type. This study also investigated the effect of slack resource - available slack, recoverable slack, and potential slack-. The more venture firms have available and potential slack, the higher probability of pursuing an explorative alliance. In addition, recoverable slack of venture firms has negative effect only on the selection of explorative alliance. The results of this study are expected to contribute the literatures of strategic management and venture firms by illustrating which CEO and firm-level factors affect the selection of strategic alliance type. This study also extends recent effort to better understand the selection of strategic alliance type with upper echelons theory and slack resource. And this study suggests implications that can increase the probability of successful decision making by venture firms in selection of strategic alliance type.