Socio-emotional Wealth Preservation and Alliance Success in Family Firms: The Role of Political Instability and Alliance Management Capability

Socio-emotional wealth preservation (SEW-P) can create a dilemma for family firms when seeking to establish strategic alliance: how to manage the need to establish strategic alliances aimed at obtaining complementary network-based resources (the economic dimension) with the fear that such a move may jeopardize family control and domination (the SEW dimension). To address this dilemma (also labelled as a ‘mixed gamble’), we theorized that the concern to preserve SEW (i.e. SEW-P) can contribute to family firms’ alliance success being dependent on the leverage of alliance management capability (AMC). We also propose that SEW-P can act as an organizational cognitive enabler for AMC. Yet the positive association between SEW-P and AMC will become stronger when family firms operate in a politically unstable environment. We tested these hypotheses us-ing a unique dataset collected from 302 family firms operating in a politically unstable environment (the Libyan context), and the analysis lends support to our model and predictions. Overall, the study advances the alliance theories and family business literature by adding new insights that explain the effect of non-financial priorities of family firms, and related contingencies, in predicting alliance success.


Introduction
An important theme that cuts across most of the family business literature is the concept of socioemotional wealth (SEW) (Gómez-Mejía and Herrero, 2022;Hughes et al., 2018).This refers to the collective set of non-economic benefits (including self-identification, personal pride and satisfaction, and the sense of a family asset to be passed along) that family members receive from the business they own (Miller and Le Breton-Miller, 2014).This, in turn, drives family businesses to engage in maintaining 'family influence and the perpetuation of the family dynasty' (Gómez-Mejía et al., 2007, p. 106).Accordingly, concern for SEW preservation (or SEW-P) is believed to be a 'real point of reference for family decisions and behaviors' (Sciascia, Mazzola and Kellermanns, 2014, p. 132), thus influencing their strategic orientation and preference (Gómez-Mejía et al., 2007;Hernández-Perlines et al., 2021;Shi, Connelly and Li, 2022).While the extant research has investigated the connection between SEW-P and various organizational decisions, such as diversification, internationalization, R&D investment and acquisition (for a review, see King et al., 2021), we still lack knowledge of the role of SEW-P in family firm alliances (Chirico et al., 2019;Debellis et al., 2021), which is the focus of this study.
The significance of addressing this gap is heightened by the fact that research has hitherto shown that SEW-P can have a double-edged sword effect on family firms' performance.On the one hand, the willingness to preserve the values that characterize the shared objectives and vision of such businesses can result in a higher degree of workforce cohesiveness and commitment, which potentially creates advantages that lead to high performance (Hillebrand et al., 2020).By contrast, the desire to protect the identity and secure transgenerational control of the firm can develop a risk-averse mindset and even 'dysfunctional conservatism' (Miller and Le Breton-Miller, 2014) towards external opportunities (Chirico et al., 2019;Lohe, Calabrò and Torchia, 2021).This is because the decision-making process can be compromised by conflicting agendas (e.g. to maintain control, family members may avoid profitable investments and initiatives that may be perceived as threatening their values and control) that can eventually undermine growth potential (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2017;Gómez-Mejia et al., 2022).
Applying this dilemma to the strategic alliance in family firms, two critical gaps can be identified.First, the association between SEW-P and the success of strategic alliances remains ambiguous.This ambiguity is due to the issue of how family businesses can balance their need to establish inter-organizational relationships aimed at obtaining complementary network-based resources (Lahiri, Mukherjee and Peng, 2020) with their fear that such a move may jeopardize family control and domination.This is because of family firms' belief that external parties are likely to intervene in their decision-making process and manipulate their priorities of SEW-P (Bouncken et al., 2020).Addressing this gap is necessary to explain why some family firms, while focusing on the protection of the non-economic utility (Leitterstorf and Rau, 2014), are able to engage in successful alliance, regardless of their concerns over losing control (Chirico et al., 2019).Second, little is known about the effect of institutional crises on family business alliances (Prügl and Spitzley, 2021;Wang et al., 2020).In 2011, the Arab Spring erupted, causing the removal of several political regimes in the Middle East and creating a new era of institutional chaos and social insecurity that affected the entire business sector in many countries (Elbanna et al., 2020).While the literature suggests that firms in such an environment would seek an alliance as a mechanism to enhance resilience (e.g. by sharing resources and information) (Korbi, Ben-Slimane and Triki, 2021), there is ambiguity on how the operation within a politically uncertain/unstable environment can shape the behaviours of family firms that embark on alliances.More specifically, such a condition raises questions of how family firms might react when encountering the double uncertainty (linked to the unstable external environment and concerns over losing family control when establishing links with external entities) (Chaib Lababidi et al., 2020).For instance, Gils et al. (2004) found that perceived environmental uncertainty -or the inability of a firm to accurately assess its external environment and the changes that may occur in it (Milliken, 1987) -can create an internal tension between the desire to preserve family SEW versus the need to adopt a new strategy suited to deal with uncertain times.Also, the extant literature has highlighted the importance of taking an environmental contingency view when studying family businesses (Naldi et al., 2013;Sirmon and Hitt, 2003).Particularly how these contingencies (e.g. the absence of the political system) can shed light on the inconsistent impact of SEW and its prioritizing effect on organizational behaviour (Firfiray et al., 2018).
To address the above-mentioned gaps, we drew on the SEW-P and alliance management capability (AMC) concepts to explain how family firms can manage the need to establish strategic alliances aimed at obtaining complementary network-based resources (the economic dimension) with the fear that such a move may jeopardize family control and domination (the SEW dimension).AMC is a constellation of organizational skills and management routines that enable a firm to exchange credible and relevant information, harmonize the relationship and build social capital with their alliance partners (Dhaundiyal and Coughlan, 2022;Schilke and Goerzen, 2010).To validate our theorizing, we used a unique dataset collected from 302 family firms operating in a politically unstable environment (the Libyan context).
Our study makes two key theoretical contributions.First, it answers the call to investigate the role of SEW consideration in the behaviour of family firms when engaged in a strategic move that can be seen as a mixed gamble (potentially The Role of Political Instability and Alliance Management Capability 3 entailing both gains and losses) (Debellis et al., 2021;Lahiri, Mukherjee and Peng, 2020).Specifically, by integrating the SEW-P and AMC concepts to develop a model suited to explain the effect of SEW-P in alliance performance, the findings demonstrate that SEW-P is positively associated with alliance success when the AMC is leveraged.Therefore, despite the 'assumed' conservative attitudes held by family firms towards alliances (Hussinger and Issah, 2019;Lahiri, Mukherjee and Peng, 2020), SEW-P, when mediated by AMC, can generate a net positive effect on performance.Therefore, our study remedies the shortcomings due to the lack of focus of alliance theories on the effect of non-financial priorities of family firms in predicting alliance success (Chirico et al., 2019).Furthermore, the model provides evidence for the association between the concern of prioritizing SEW -as a social attribute of family firms (Barrett and Moores, 2020;Cirillo et al., 2020) -and the possession of AMC (comprising proactiveness, coordination and learning skills).Therefore, it contributes to the limited AMC-enablers body of knowledge (Kohtamäki, Rabetino and Möller, 2018;Wang and Rajagopalan, 2015) by emphasizing the role of setting (i.e.being a family firm) as an idiosyncratic enabler for these capabilities.Second, we add value to the family firm research that predominantly focuses on developed and stable economies, by studying the effect of political instability on the relationship between SEW-P and AMC.Therefore, we provide new insights into the external environmental impact on family firm behaviour (Cruz and Nordqvist, 2012;Zahra, 2018).By focusing on Libya as a typical example of a politically unstable country, we heed the call of researchers who urge examining the contingency effects embedded in under-studied domains on family firms' external activities (e.g.family firm alliances) (Al-Hyari et al., 2012;Firfiray et al., 2018;John and Lawton, 2018).

The influence of SEW-P on AMC in family firm alliances
Research shows that approximately half of the strategic alliances do not live up to expectations, which is largely attributed to ineffectiveness in managing the collaborative activities between partners (Flatten et al., 2011).Accordingly, several researchers have highlighted the importance of AMC for alliance success (Kohtamäki, Rabetino and Möller, 2018;Sluyts et al., 2011).In essence, AMC can be regarded as a set of organizational skills and routines (Schilke and Goerzen, 2010) that enables an organization to identify compatible partners, exchange credible and relevant information, and build relational social capital (Al-Tabbaa et al., 2019;Kauppila, 2015).These capabilities are unique (Rothaermel and Deeds, 2006), rare and non-substitutable (Crook et al., 2008), because firms vary in how they build and utilize themeither individually (i.e. as one AMC) or in combination (Wang and Rajagopalan, 2015).Despite the progress in this field, it is notable that little attention has been paid to the antecedents of AMC (Kohtamäki, Rabetino and Möller, 2018;Niesten and Jolink, 2015).This limitation is even more evident in the family business literature, where the idiosyncratic effect of the family on the possession of AMC is almost overlooked (Feranita et al., 2017).Therefore, in our study, we address this limitation by investigating the effect of family firms' concern to preserve their SEW (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2011) on the extent to which these firms would have the three prominent organizational skills that underpin AMC (namely proactiveness, coordination and learning).See Figure 1.
First, alliance proactiveness, which concerns the 'extent to which an organization engages in identifying and responding to partnering opportunities' (Sarkar et al., 2001, p. 701), enables firms to identify and sense partners with potential compatibility and synergy (Wang and Rajagopalan, 2015).This implies that family firms with a greater concern over SEW-P (e.g.maintaining family control) will usually be more selective and seek to engage with trustworthy partners (Tasavori, Zaefarian and Eng, 2018).In other words, family firm owners will carefully identify and select their partners, focusing on those who share their interests and values (Kontinen and Ojala, 2012;Miller and Le Breton-Miller, 2005).Also, a higher level of prioritizing SEW-P means that family firm owners are likely to avoid any partners they might perceive as a challenge to their control (Gómez-Mejía et al., 2007), and/or put their resources and image at risk (Carney, 2005;Pittino and Visintin, 2011).As a result, family firm owners with greater SEW-P logic are likely to possess the organizational skills required to seek, identify and select partners with whom they feel they will be able to  et al., 2019) over the nature of the partners with whom they should collaborate.This, in turn, increases their chance of enacting specific processes for the selection of the right ones, because proactive firms are more systematic in identifying and selecting partners due to their accumulation of alliance experience (Yang and Meyer, 2019).Accordingly, we argue that family firms with the motive to preserve their SEW are likely to possess the alliance proactiveness capabilities needed to seek and establish alliances with appropriate partners.Hence, we hypothesize: H1a: In family firms, there is a positive association between SEW-P and alliance proactiveness capabilities.
Alliance coordination reflects the ability of a firm to build consensus about alliance requirements, map the interdependence and responsibility between partners, and specify a working framework for task co-execution and adaptation when change is needed (Schreiner, Kale and Corsten, 2009).In short, it aims to ensure that firms' alliance approach is effective and legitimate by building and maintaining social capital with their partners (Chaudhary et al., 2021).Extending the previous argument, we anticipate that family firms will seek to have adequate coordination skills to routinize inter-firm cooperative behaviour that can preserve their SEW when collaborating.
The possession of coordinating skills is particularly critical to avoid SEW losses in alliance (e.g.loss of family control/domination), where research shows that family firms typically fear establishing external linkages as they might pressure the family to curb its influence (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2014).Furthermore, to reverse their inwardlooking nature and distrust of outsiders, family firms would typically focus on 'long-term sustained relationships' with outside parties such as suppliers and alliance partners (Le Breton -Miller and Miller, 2006).These lasting relationships would accumulate trust and mutual understanding over time (Feranita et al., 2017), thus being preferred for SEW-P (Metsola et al., 2021).This, in turn, would motivate the family firms to enact coordination capabilities to ensure that their alliances will be 'trouble-free' as a result of transparency and smooth execution of alliance activities.This is why family firms with SEW-P concern are likely to seek alliances via personal contacts (Kontinen and Ojala, 2012), because this will facilitate interaction between the partners (e.g.open communication, greater closeness and productive working relationships; Schilke and Goerzen, 2010) due to pre-existing trust and reciprocity (Eddleston et al., 2010).On the other hand, family firms need to portray and maintain a better image (a characteristic of SEW-P) in the community (Sageder, Mitter and Feldbauer-Durstmüller, 2018).Accordingly, these firms will be motivated to establish alliance coordination capabilities (e.g.enact a transparent working The Role of Political Instability and Alliance Management Capability 5 framework, maintain an ethical code of practice to ensure honesty and integrity) through which they can minimize the risk of their social image being threatened.
The above arguments are consistent with the observation that family firms are usually engaged in a limited number of carefully selected alliances characterized by shared common interests and values (Kontinen and Ojala, 2012).They are likely to strive to carefully coordinate these specific relationships and establish a mutual understanding (Graves and Thomas, 2004), which increases their skills and ability to coordinate such alliances successfully while preserving the family SEW.Therefore, we argue: H1b: In family firms, there is a positive association between SEW-P and alliance coordination capabilities.
In principle, alliance learning pertains to the routines and procedural structures that facilitate learning and knowledge transfer from the partner (Schilke and Goerzen, 2010).By drawing on the arguments in the previous hypothesis (that family firms with SEW-P concern are likely to have higher social capital with partners), we propose that the tendency of family firms to establish partnerships characterized by mutual understanding, trust and shared objectives and values would increase the relational learning ability in these firms (Dyer and Hatch, 2006).These favourable relational qualities (that reside in the long-term relationship) encourage building close interactions between alliance partners, which supports a rich tacit knowledge exchange (Bouncken et al., 2020) and creation (Grant and Baden-Fuller, 2004).Furthermore, the emotional attachment family firm owners typically develop with their partners (who are carefully selected to preserve SEW) (Carlock and Ward, 2001;Kellermanns et al., 2008) increases trust and reduces the threat of knowledge leakage (Feranita et al., 2017).In turn, this trust reduces opportunistic behaviours and increases engagement in mutual knowledge creation and learning within the alliance (Arslan et al., 2021;Molina-Morales, Martínez-Fernández and Torlò, 2011).In this respect, Cesinger et al. (2016) explained that trust and commitment to the relationship facilitate the learning process.
On the other hand, as potential gains or losses of SEW are the primary frame of reference to ex-plain family firm actions (Li and Daspit, 2016), these firms are likely to build 'purposeful networkbased learning activities' that enable effective utilization of partners' knowledge (Cesinger et al., 2016).This is because family firms would seek to offset the potential SEW-P effect (i.e. that leads to adopting a conservative management approach, for example, avoiding assigning experienced nonfamily members to the top management team, to minimize the loss in SEW) by building a systematic approach for identifying and exploiting external knowledge (i.e.learning) at the operational level (Lin and Wang, 2021).This is consistent with 'extent to which an organization engages in identifying and responding to partnering opportunities Berrone et al. (2012, p. 264), who assert that 'the preservation of the family dynasty, the perpetuation of family values through the business, and the intention to pass the business to subsequent generation[s] foster… commitment to building capabilities, and learning'.Hence, we hypothesize: H1c: In family firms, there is a positive association between SEW-P and alliance learning capabilities.

The moderating effect of perceived political instability
Political instability (PI) refers to a 'situation, activity or pattern of behavior that threatens to change or changes the political system of a country in a non-constitutional way' (Gyimah-Brempong and Traynor, 1999).This sets the stage for the occurrence of instability events -such as public demonstrations, coups, riots, strikes and civil wars (Elbahnasawy et al., 2016).PI gives rise to economic uncertainty and mismanagement, which poses a direct challenge on firms' survival (Chikweche, 2013).Focusing on developing economies, PI can cause three major consequences: poor regime performance, ethnic polarization and political factionalism (Kieh, 2009).As a prominent example, during the Arab Spring, some Arab countries witnessed instability in their political regimes, leading to uncertainty and turbulence in all economic sectors, including family businesses (Bekaert et al., 2014;Darendeli and Hill, 2016).Specifically, the Arab Spring protests in Libya (2011) escalated into a full-scale conflict and eventually led to the overthrow of the government (Darendeli and Hill, 2016).The first free elections took place in 2012, giving way to a wave of optimism and hope.However, in 2014, violence erupted again, and the country gradually sank into civil war (OECD, 2016).This created a weak legal framework, domestic insecurity and violence, and political uncertainty, which put huge stress on the Libyan business sector (Khodr and Ruble, 2013).While such conditions can affect businesses differently, based mainly upon their differential sensitivity and resilience to external shocks (Krammer, 2018), small and resource-constrained family firms are typically among the most vulnerable entities in such a condition (Battisti and Deakins, 2015).
In markets subject to PI, resources are typically hard to obtain; hence, efficiently sensing and making timely and essential adjustments is key for companies to achieve their goals (D'Aveni et al., 2010).Thus, firms will be keen to form and exploit strategic alliances to access the knowledge and resources needed to enhance their survival (Herbane, 2019).However, Srivastava, Moser and Hartmann (2018) contended that alliances must be configured correctly, especially under the condition of external uncertainty, where there could be a partial or complete breakdown of state authority.We extend this argument by proposing that the level of perceived PI by family firms can affect the strength of association between their SEW-P and AMC concerns.Below, we discuss this moderation effect on each of the three capabilities.
First, when a firm faces turbulence in its external environment, there is a greater need for alliance proactiveness capabilities, such as scanning and analysing the market to appropriate new alliance opportunities (Sluyts et al., 2011).Accordingly, when family firms perceive greater risk for PI, they are likely to become more concerned about preserving their SEW and thus to become more selective, as discussed in relation to H1a, in identifying potential partnering opportunities (Schilke and Goerzen, 2010), adapting to changing conditions (Quinn, 2000) and sensing the environment in relation to seizing opportunities (Teece, 2007).More specifically, we propose that when family firms are faced with turbulence or uncertainty, their actions are more likely to be driven by the need to preserve their SEW (Firfiray et al., 2018), as the perceived risks associated with fraud, opportunistic mindsets and lack of reliability (McCarthy et al., 2010) of potential partners will increase (Lahiri, Mukherjee and Peng, 2020).This is because, under conditions of perceived PI, there is an expectation to encounter limited market information, inefficient market regulations and lack of relational confidence due to institutional voids (Todeva and Knoke, 2005).These factors would complicate the process of initiating an alliance and make finding trusted and compatible partners more difficult.Therefore, under such conditions, family firms are likely to demand greater proactiveness capabilities to identify partners that would not jeopardize their SEW.This implies that family firms will be risk-averse and more selective in choosing partners from their existing networks, which -given that the preservation of SEW is the key selection criterion -are expected not to challenge their family-based values and with which they have a mutual understanding and reciprocity.Accordingly, when family firms perceive high PI, they are more likely to systematically seek, identify and negotiate with partners drawn from their trust-based network, which reflects greater need of the proactiveness capabilities.Therefore: H2a: In family firms, the positive association between SEW-P and alliance proactiveness capabilities is positively moderated by the level of perceived political instability.
Environments perceived as politically unstable are typically associated with significant uncertainty; this is expected to expose a firm to several waves of change, which demand high flexibility (Yu et al., 2019).Therefore, when a family firm finds a partner and establishes an alliance, its following actions would be aimed at protecting its identity and/or value (Carney, 1998).It would be further inclined to strengthen its alliance coordination capabilities in order to design, implement and accomplish collaborative tasks and activities that can be adaptable (Moshtari, 2016;Schreiner, Kale and Corsten, 2009).In other words, due to perceived PI, the structure and content of an alliance may need to be regularly re-evaluated and changed in order for it to remain compatible with the changing external environment (cf.Kwok et al., 2019).Yet, as family firms would need to ensure that any new changes will not threaten their internal control or image (Hughes et al., 2018), the SEW-P concern would drive the firms to own and leverage more coordination skills (including communication, negotiating, bonding and problem-solving) to account for changes and realign their alliances (Feranita et al., 2017) The Role of Political Instability and Alliance Management Capability 7 Additionally, when legal ordering is absent, market information is unverifiable and market conditions remain unstable, leading to higher transaction costs.This may increase the propensity of partners to act opportunistically (Delios and Henisz, 2003).As a result, the behaviours of family firms will be driven by the need to be proactive and savvy in protecting their SEW and its perpetuity against the potential risk embedded in external partnerships (cf.Culpepper, 2005).For example, Korbi, Ben-Slimane and Triki (2021) found that allying firms in Tunisia following the Arab Spring sought to redesign their organizational structure to create new governance mechanisms and roles to maintain the stability of their alliance.
Similarly, as environmental volatility can hamper attachment building, resource sharing and collective commitments (Luo, 2007) -thus causing alliance success to deteriorate (Daspit et al., 2016;Luo, 2002) and family values to be challenged -perceived PI is likely to drive family firms to further protect their SEW by deploying stronger coordination capabilities suited to stabilize their alliances.Hence, we hypothesize: H2b: In family firms, the positive association between SEW-P and alliance coordination capabilities is positively moderated by the level of perceived political instability.
Inter-organizational learning enables partnering firms to connect and share experiential knowledge, and to pursue the process of knowledge acquisition (Bouncken et al., 2020).Yet the extant research shows that this learning (e.g. via R&D activities and technology-market knowledge transfer) is typically less efficient in regions characterized as politically unstable (Allard et al., 2012;Liao and Yu, 2012;Nadeem et al., 2020).This is because PI is likely to result in a deficiency of information (Todeva and Knoke, 2005), uncertainty and mistrust in the integrity of rules and regulations, and a lack of reliability of market knowledge (Delios and Henisz, 2003).Therefore, we posit that the association between family firms' desire to maintain family control and exercise family influence (i.e. to place high importance on SEW-P) with their alliance learning capabilities will be stronger under the conditions of PI.
Firms, including family ones, can reduce market and technology uncertainty by accessing external knowledge (Marinković et al., 2022;Monteiro and Birkinshaw, 2017), and the need for this knowledge becomes even more critical during times of PI (Saadatyar et al., 2020).For instance, Mansour et al. (2019) have found that Libyan firms have established crisis management approaches in response to the armed conflict.However, developing this approach was underpinned by the ability of these firms to collect and analyse information during the early stages of a crisis.Processing this information enabled the design of operational routines to monitor the post-civil war circumstances, recognize potential risks and make attempts to avoid or at least minimize the consequences of these risks.Yet the typical inward-looking nature and distrust of outsiders of family firms (due to SEW-P concerns) (Metsola et al., 2021) will complicate the process of obtaining up-to-date and reliable knowledge.As such, the weakness (associated with PI) of the legal and regulatory systems intended to monitor the market status would increase the risk of opportunistic and exploitive behaviours (Delios and Henisz, 2003;Todeva and Knoke, 2005).Therefore, family firms would rely fundamentally on knowledge received from their trusted partners; this is because trust (i.e. the expectation of partners not to challenge their SEW value system) is a crucial criterion to which they look when forming alliances (Cesinger et al., 2016).Accordingly, to protect their SEW, family firms would focus on creating further learning opportunities with their trusted partners (Bell et al., 2004).In order for this to work, the need to capitalize on and further strengthen the learning capabilities becomes more important when perceiving higher PI.Therefore, these firms would carefully design explicit, yet adaptable (Cesinger et al., 2016), learning mechanisms to maintain their authority over knowledge-sharing practices and processes.This learning capability enables firms to access the knowledge assets of trusted partners, to leverage any complementarities that may exist among the different and unique competencies found along their extended value chain (Kauppila, 2015).Hence, we hypothesize: H2c: In family firms, the positive association between SEW-P and alliance learning capabilities is positively moderated by the level of perceived political instability.

SEW-P and alliance success: The mediating role of AMC
Prior research has frequently regarded family firms as social groups within which economic activities are embedded, and their survival and growth as being typically based on the exploitation of opportunities found in their domestic markets (Swoboda and Olejnik, 2013).However, these firms are often unable to access the resources and capabilities they need to remain competitive (Herrero and Hughes, 2019), which also increases 'lock-in' situations and reduces innovation (De Massis et al., 2013).These challenges have encouraged an outward orientation (Liang, Lu and Wang, 2012) aimed at sustaining and protecting the family ownership (and thus preserving SEW), with several studies indicating that appropriate cooperation with external partners fosters family firms' performance (Feranita et al., 2017;Flatten et al., 2011).Yet, the decision to engage in an alliance can be problematic.The interference of external partners may challenge the significance placed on the emotional attachments and social ties between family members, and threaten transgenerational succession (Arregle et al., 2007).Moreover, as an effective alliance demands contracts to regulate the processes of interaction and exchange, the family firm may concede a degree of control (i.e.endow rights to their partner), which is incompatible with the logic of SEW-P (Bouncken et al., 2020).This is why, when making strategic decisions (such as starting an alliance), SEW utilities can often be prioritized over economic considerations (Berrone et al., 2010).As a result, family firms would aim to protect their social identity and control by engaging in distinctive behaviours, for example, by pursuing nepotism (Firfiray et al., 2018), focusing on succession (Zellweger, Nason and Nordqvist, 2012) and accepting a greater influence of emotions on decision-making (Stanley, 2010).Such behaviours are, in turn, likely to complicate the establishment and management of effective alliances (Debellis et al., 2021).Therefore, to resolve this dilemma (i.e.preserve SEW while establishing alliances with external partners), we posit that family firms with SEW-P concerns are likely to make every effort to achieve alliance success.Yet this path is dependent on the leverage of AMC as mediating mechanism.AMC is typically vital for starting and managing the alliance process (Kandemir et al., 2006), where research on AMC has found an associa-tion between their possession (as organizational capabilities) and outcomes such as the achievement of alliance objectives (Kohtamäki, Rabetino and Möller, 2018) and increased competitiveness (Kohtamäki, Rabetino and Möller, 2018).The theoretical conjecture is that AMC will enable partners to harmonize their relationship by adjusting its attributes in response to environmental and partner-related changes (Niesten and Jolink, 2015).Next, we discuss the specific mediating role played by each of the three capabilities.
Alliance-proactive firms typically make 'efforts to identify [i.e., sense] potentially valuable partnering opportunities' (Sarkar et al., 2001, p. 121) by applying their related micro-skills (e.g.scanning the market) to spot, interpret and pursue any valuable opportunities in the environment (Bonner et al., 2005).Therefore, such firms are able to spot market requirements and effectively identify and classify new alliance opportunities suited to gain resources (Schilke and Goerzen, 2010).However, the sensing skill is important not only in recognizing suitable alliance partners endowed with complementary competencies and resources (Teece, 2007), but also in identifying trusted and compatible partners that are less likely to challenge the family firm's SEW.In this regard, those family firms that are capable of dexterously sensing safe alliance opportunities -driven by the need to preserve their SEW (Fitz-Koch and Nordqvist, 2017) -are likely to enjoy initial firstmover advantages on the market because they are more confident and thus move faster than their rivals, which can be translated into a higher alliance success (Schilke and Goerzen, 2010).In addition, the mediating role played by alliance proactiveness can become more evident 'when the family's emotional attachment is so strong that it values existing knowledge assets, attributing lower value to external opportunities that are distant from their knowledge base' (Debellis et al., 2021, p. 100739).In other words, the desire of a family business to become involved in high-risk alliances will be curbed by fear of harming its SEW, which will lead it to embrace an inward orientation that focuses on its current 'proven to work' resource arrangements, and to avoid any risky external initiatives that might require a substantial reconfiguration of its existing resources and structures (Kotlar and Sieger, 2019).In such a case, proactiveness can play a key role as firms endowed with it will be able to effectively identify partners The Role of Political Instability and Alliance Management Capability 9 in possession of complementary knowledge and resources, and have strategic compatibility, which is a prerequisite for maximizing value creation in an alliance (Kandemir et al., 2006) and avoid unwarranted risk-taking orientation (Al-Tabbaa et al., 2019).
Firms endowed with alliance coordination can better manage resources and activities with partners (Gulati et al., 2005).Such ability enables firms to identify and build consensus in regard to the task requirements of a given alliance, the nature of the associated interdependence between partners and the specification of the working procedures needed for task execution (Schreiner, Kale and Corsten, 2009).Extending this argument to family businesses, we argue that coordination (as an organizational ability encompassing several skills such as communication, negotiation and bonding to build relational trust) plays a particular mediation role in the relationship between SEW-P and alliance success, and the rationale is twofold.First, the presence of dependencies among partners demands close coordination because the resources and tasks would otherwise be dispersed over the various partners, thus requiring an effective co-management approach (Schilke and Goerzen, 2010) to avoid underperforming processes (Niesten and Jolink, 2015) due to SEW-P pressure.In this respect, Ng, Dayan and Di Benedetto (2019) found that family SMEs can reduce the negative effect of SEW concerns (e.g.prioritizing family members and imposing succession mechanisms on nonfamily members) on firm performance by incorporating the managerial capabilities effect (i.e.including the ability to motivate others, align resources to achieve goals, communicate with family and nonfamily actors) as a mediator.Therefore, the capacity for joint working would be necessary for efficient and appropriate task execution (Schreiner, Kale and Corsten, 2009), and family firms keen to preserve their unique values and identity are more likely to apply their coordination skills to achieve alliance success.Second, through communication and negotiation, firms reconcile and balance collective and individual interests to pre-empt any potential conflicts (Todeva and Knoke, 2005).In other words, alliance coordination will be necessary to quickly build social capital (which entails reciprocal trust and commitment) between the family firm and its external partner, which would be essential to preserve its risk-averse attitude (e.g.due to expectations of alliance opportunistic haz-ards) and facilitate the post-alliance formation processes leading to the fulfilment of its objectives (Kohtamäki, Rabetino and Möller, 2018).
Finally, the alliance learning capability (which encompasses micro-skills/processes that include the processing and diffusion of systematic information across the firm) increases a firm's ability to facilitate the articulation and transfer of knowledge from partners (Dyer and Nobeoka, 2000), which is widely regarded as a key advantage of intergenerational relationships (Leischnig and Geigenmüller, 2020).This is why any strategic alliance will involve a learning aspect, which can be either explicit (as in the case of R&D alliances), implicit (i.e.co-learning through social interaction between partners), or a mix of both (Schreiner, Kale and Corsten, 2009).The empirical evidence shows that, by utilizing their learning skills, firms can expand the scale of their resource appropriation from alliances (Schilling and Steensma, 2001).Accordingly, we expect alliance learning to play a critical role in enabling family firms with a higher focus on SEW-P (and thus keen to keep developing and sustaining their business) to identify, transform, systematize and socialize knowledge and, accordingly, to excel in knowledge acquisition, which is a fundamental source of alliance success (Cesinger et al., 2016).Moreover, the possession of specific organizational learning systems (e.g.dedicated R&D unit) can compensate for the exclusion of non-family executives (resulting from concerns to maintain family control) (Gu et al., 2019), where these executives typically 'possess diverse skills not available within the family' (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2018, p. 1376).Reflecting on the above arguments, we posit: H3a: Alliance proactiveness mediates the relationship between SEW-P and alliance success.H3b: Alliance coordination mediates the relationship between SEW-P and alliance success.H3c: Alliance learning mediates the relationship between SEW-P and alliance success.

Research context
To test our hypotheses, we gathered data from the managers of Libyan family firms.We chose the Libyan economy because it is dominated by  (Hweio, 2012;Lacher, 2011).Hence, this context offered us a unique opportunity to understand the effect of family ownership on alliances and its related capabilities (Chung and Luo, 2008).Moreover, the Libyan setting was an ideal domain to investigate the impact of perceived PI on firms' alliance activities.Over the last 10 years, Libya has witnessed massive political and institutional change and uncertainty.After 2011, Libya became the stage of a political power struggle between three governments seeking and demanding legitimacy: the Government of National Reconciliation, the Salvation Government and the Parliament Government.Studying alliances and AMC under such conditions can provide unique insights into firms' approaches to alliances during prolonged periods of instability.

Data collection and sample
The sampling frame of our study was made up of the Ministry of Economy and Trade and the Centre of Export Development databases, from which we randomly selected a sample of 1000 family firms.About half of our sample firms (46%) were located in Tripoli, West Libya, reflecting the prominence of family businesses in this region (OECD, 2016).The remainder (54%) were located in Benghazi, Misrate, Jafara, Az-Zawiyah, Khoms, Sabha, Garyan, Sirte, Derna, Zuwara and Jebel Akhdar.We designed an online questionnaire and distributed it during the year 2016 using the Bristol Online Survey tool.The key participants were owners or senior managers (Deutscher et al., 2016).After two weeks, we had received only 150 responses, and we thus sent a reminder email to increase the response rate.Ultimately, we received 302 completed responses.This 30.2% response rate was acceptable (Herbane, 2019;Svensson, Mysen and Payan, 2010), and in line with the current research on family businesses (Pielsticker and Hiebl, 2020).The presence of non-response bias was tested using the method recommended by Armstrong and Overton (1977).The respondents were divided into two groups based on response time: early (prereminder) and late (post-reminder) respondents.Next, a range of demographic questions and main variables were used to run t-tests of group means.The results revealed no significant difference between the two respondent groups in terms of industry type (t = −0.27,p = 0.79), SEW-P (t = −0.32,p = 0.75), alliance coordination (t = 0.67, p = 0.51) and alliance proactiveness (t = 0.04, p = 0.97), suggesting that non-response bias was not an issue in our study.
Our sample represented family businesses that had formed alliances.Detailed industry information is contained in Table 1.Moreover, it should be noted that 80.8% of our respondents were either owners (52%) or senior managers (28.8%) of their respective firms, while the remaining 19.2% held middle-management positions.Their work experience averaged 12 years and their median age was 17 years.

Variable construction
Scales validated from the literature were used to measure the variables of our study, as illustrated in Table 2

Perceived political instability
Refers to the recognition of events that could elicit a firm's uncertainty about the stability of the political system and/or government (Gyimah-Brempong and Traynor, 1999).
We adopted three items from Brunetti et al.
(1998).The respondents were asked to rate the extent to which they perceived political risks.Consistent with previous studies (e.g.Ambos et al., 2020;Krammer, 2018;Xie, Qi and Zhu, 2019), we focused on the owners/senior managers' subjective perceptions of political instability in the country, as opposed to its actual level.As Giambona et al. (2017) argued: 'a manager's subjective perception of political risk is also important for how firms manage political risk' (p.524).
Alliance proactiveness A firm's ability to identify valuable alliance partnering opportunities and act to exploit them (Leischnig and Geigenmüller, 2018).
Measured using four items based on Schilke and Goerzen (2010).
Alliance coordination A firm's ability to effectively manage mutual responsibilities, dependencies and processes (Wang and Rajagopalan, 2015).We assessed alliance coordination through four items inspired by Pavlou and El Sawy (2006) and Schilke and Goerzen (2010).

Alliance learning
The firm's ability to transfer knowledge from alliance partners (Dyer and Nobeoka, 2000).
Four items were adopted from Schilke and Goerzen (2010). ©

Alliance success
The extent to which our sample family firms were satisfied with their overall alliance performance, perceived alliance-related goal fulfilment and perceived alliances as significantly enhancing their competitive position.
Following several key studies on strategic alliances Study variables definition and operationalization (e.g., Kale and Singh, 2007, Jiang et al., 2020, Lambe et al., 2002), we used alliance success as a reflective measure composed of three-items suited to capture the issues highlighted in the alliance success definition.This was necessary because 1) our model was aimed at investigating the effect of SEW-P and AMC on the overall alliance performance of family firms, and 2) no secondary database was available on the performance of Libyan family firms (which had been suffering from political and economic turbulence and the lack of a stable institutional system since 2011).Therefore, our only option was to utilize the perceptions of our respondents, who were well informed about their firms' alliances because they were the managers/owners of their respective family businesses and, accordingly, had the managerial confidence needed to evaluate their overall alliance success.

Control variables
We included a number of control variables that had been shown to influence alliance success (Heimeriks and Duysters, 2007, Fang et al., 2016, O'Dwyer and Gilmore, 2018).The Role of Political Instability and Alliance Management Capability 13 feedback from three senior academics in the field of alliances and family business, and from seven managers of Libyan family firms.Based on their feedback, we modified the questionnaire and, in particular, integrated the four items of SEW-P in a single construct.All the multi-item constructs were measured on a five-point Likert scale.Table 3 describes the measurement items, with their respective factor loadings and reliability indicators.

Estimation strategy and robustness checks
We chose to use structural equation modelling (SEM) over the more conventional ordinary least squares (OLS) method for the following reasons.First, SEM is helpful to test the psychometric properties of measurements and isolate any measurement errors that could affect the testing of theoretical propositions (Davvetas et al., 2020, p. 4).Second, SEM is capable of modelling latent constructs with multiple indicators (Kline, 2015).Third, unlike the OLS method, which estimates the effect of a set of independent variables on a single dependent one, SEM enables the concurrent estimation of multiple complex models operating simultaneously as both causes and outcomes of other variables in a hypothesized model (McLean, Al-Nabhani and Wilson, 2018).Specifically, SEM confers the ability to investigate (1) how SEW-P affects alliance proactiveness, coordination and learning and (2) how alliance proactiveness, coordination and learning explain alliance success.SEM usually involves the analysis and interpretation of data in two stages.First, the measurement model is assessed for reliability and validity.Second, the structural model itself is assessed.We followed these two stages using AMOS 26.0 software.
Measures were undertaken to check the problem of endogeneity that could occur when independent variables might not be endogenous (Cook et al., 2002).First, the measurement model was assessed by testing construct reliability and validity by means of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).The fit statistics of the model were found to suggest a good fit to the data (χ 2 = 199.30;df = 180; χ 2 /df = 1.11;GFI = 0.95; CFI = 0.99; RM-SEA = 0.02; SRMR = 0.04), and the measurement weights were found to all be statistically significant (p < 0.001).Second, the convergent validity of all the constructs in the measurement model was assessed by following the comprehensive procedure proposed by Hair et al. (2015).As shown in Table 3, the factor loadings for all the items were found to be higher than 0.60, thus exceeding the 0.50 minimum threshold (Bagozzi and Yi, 2012).In addition, the value of Cronbach's α for all the constructs was found to exceed the cut-off point of 0.70 (Nunnally, 1978).As can be seen in Table 3, the results show a satisfactory level of composite reliability, which was found to be above 0.70 for each construct (Fornell and Larcker, 1981), suggesting that the variables were reliable.As suggested by Fornell and Larcker (1981), our discriminant validity analysis indicated that the average variance extracted (AVE) for any two constructs was greater than the squared correlation between them (see Table 4).Thus, all constructs in the measurement model were shown to possess adequate discriminant validity.Satisfactorily meeting the requirements of non-response bias tests, Cronbach's α, CR and the factor loading criteria confirmed the reliability and validity of the chosen constructs, minimizing measurement errors.
Third, to ensure the appropriateness of the sample for our study, we performed a common method bias test.Accordingly, we conducted Harman's (1967) single-factor test using exploratory factor analysis and CFA.First, we constrained the factor analysis to one factor, which explained 25% of the variance, well below the 50% threshold (e.g.McLean, Al-Nabhani and Wilson, 2018).Second, in the CFA, we compared our theorized multi-factor measurement model against a singlefactor model.The single-factor solution was found to produce an inadequate fit (χ 2 = 1865.95;df = 195; χ 2 /df = 9.57; GFI = 0.59; CFI = 0.52; RMSEA = 0.17; SRMR = 0.14) compared to the multi-factor measurement model.The χ 2 difference test suggested that the multi-factor measurement model fitted the data significantly better than the single-factor one.As a result, common method bias was found not to be an issue in this study.The highest correlation among the constructs was 0.48 (p < 0.001), with most being lower than 0.3 (Bagozzi et al., 1991) (see Table 4).Fourth, as we used the product term to test the moderating effect, we created a multiplicative term for SEW-P and PI to verify H2a-c.Further, to avoid any multicollinearity issues linked to the introduction of such a multiplicative term, we orthogonalized the two variables in it (Little, Bovaird and Widaman,

AP1
We actively monitor our environment to identify partnering opportunities 0.85

AP2
We are alert to market developments that create potential alliance opportunities 0.84

AP3
We often take the initiative to approach companies that have proposals similar to the business of our company   2006).We also checked for multicollinearity using multiple regression analysis.The variance inflation factors (VIF) were found to range from 1.20 to 1.60, well below the maximum threshold of 3 (Hair et al., 2015); hence, we concluded that multicollinearity was not a problem in our model.Fifth, as many theoretically justified control variables as possible were included to avoid the omitting of a regressor (Rubin, 2008), which is recommended despite the cost of reduced efficiency (i.e. higher standard errors) (Cameron and Trivedi, 2005).Finally, as presented in the findings section, the outcome of SEM, adopting Baron and Kenny's (1986) approach, was further validated using the recommendations of Iacobucci et al. (2007) and Preacher and Hayes (2008) in regard to calculating direct, indirect and total effects using the bootstrapping method.

Analysis and findings
We tested the SEM containing all the hypothesized relationships, along with all control variables, using AMOS graphics 26.0.The structural model was found to provide an adequate model fit (χ 2 /df = 2.01; GFI = 0.97; NFI = 0.92; CFI = 0.94; RM-SEA = 0.04).Subsequently, we estimated 15 nested models with Models 1, 4, 7 and 10 as baseline models with only control variables.Table 5 presents the detailed results of our analysis.The hypothesized paths were found to be statistically significant and in the expected direction.First, the results of Model 2 (Table 5) suggest that SEW-P positively influences alliance proactiveness (β = 0.13, p < 0.05), thus supporting H1a.Second, Model 5 indicates that SEW-P has a positive impact on alliance coordination (β = 0.17, p < 0.01), supporting H1b.Third, we obtained evidence supporting H1c as we found that SEW-P has a positive impact on alliance learning (β = 0.15, p < 0.01) in Model 8.
In H2a-c, we posited that perceived PI moderates the impact of SEW-P on AMC.Our results indicate that perceived PI moderates the relationship between SEW-P and alliance proactiveness (β = 0.16, p < 0.01) in Model 3, thus confirming H2a.Furthermore, we found support for H2b in Model 6 (i.e. that perceived PI affects the positive relationship between SEW-P and alliance coordination) (β = 0.24, p < 0.001).The results also provided support for H2c in Model 9 -validating the moderating effect of perceived PI on the relationship between SEW-P and alliance learning (β = 0.22, p < 0.001).
In H3-c, we argued that the three alliance capabilities mediate the relationship between SEW-P and alliance success.Specifically, H3a was found to be supported as the results showed that the structural path from SEW-P to alliance proactiveness is significant (β = 0.13, p < 0.05) in Model 2, and that alliance proactiveness is significantly related to alliance success (β = 0.33, p < 0.001) in Model 12. Importantly, the significantly positive association between SEW-P and alliance success (β = 0.02, p > 0.10) was found to disappear when this relationship is channelled through alliance proactiveness (β = 0.51, p < 0.001) in Model 13, thereby confirming H3a.For H3b, the path from SEW-P to alliance coordination was found to be significant (β = 0.17, p < 0.01) in Model 5 and alliance coordination was found to be significantly related to alliance success (β = 0.22, p < 0.001) in Model 12. Importantly, the significant, positive association between SEW-P and alliance success was found to disappear (β = 0.01, p > 0.10) when it is channelled through alliance coordination (β = 0.49, p < 0.001) in Model 14, thereby confirming H3b.H3c was also supported, as the path from SEW-P to alliance learning was found to be significant (β = 0.15, p < 0.01) in Model 8 and alliance coordination was found to be significantly related to alliance success (β = 0.24, p < 0.001) in Model 12. Importantly, the significant, positive association between SEW-P and alliance success was found to disappear (β = 0.02, p > 0.10) when this relationship is channelled through alliance coordination (β = 0.47, p < 0.001) in Model 15.

Post-hoc analyses
To confirm the findings of our study, we conducted a robustness analysis in Appendix A.

Discussion and conclusion
The primary goal of this study is to investigate the role of SEW preservation in the alliances formed by family firms.We also considered the effect of political instability as a contextual condition.Reflecting on the analysis and findings, the study makes a number of novel contributions.First, we advance the literature by introducing the SEW-P as a catalyst for alliance success, when mediated by AMC.Therefore, we offer new insights into the mixed gamble dilemma (Debellis et al., 2021;Lahiri, Mukherjee and Peng, 2020): family firms need to weigh 'anticipated losses and gains… in both financial and SEW terms' when taking strategic decisions (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2018, p. 1370).More specifically, we demonstrate that this dilemma (i.e.how to benefit from the engagement in risky activities, such as the strategic alliance, while being concerned about SEW-P) can be resolvable by factoring in the perspective of organizational capability.By integrating the SEW and AMC concepts, we theorized and empirically validated a model that explains an indirect association between SEW-P and alliance success dependent on the leveraging of alliance capabilities (proactiveness, coordination and learning).Therefore, we respond to the recent call for investigating 'strategic decisions in which owners attempt to ensure the continued future flows of nonfinancial utilities under uncertainty… these considerations may be particularly important when examining… family firms engaging in strategic alliances ' Chirico et al. (2019' Chirico et al. ( , p. 1372)).At the same time, the study provides an alternative view of the so-called 'dark side of SEW' (Kellermanns et al., 2012), where the intention to protect and enhance the SEW endowments can induce family firms to be risk-averse and conservative towards alliances (Lahiri, Mukherjee and Peng, 2020), which can deprive the firm of benefiting from external opportunities (Chirico et al., 2019).By shedding light on the role of AMC as a critical factor for family firms to effectively establish and manage their alliance, we address the limitation in the literature that has been unclear as to how these firms formulate their external collaborative linkages (López-Cózar-Navarro, Benito-Hernández and Platero-Jaime, 2017) and alliances (Gu et al., 2016).
Relatedly, our study contributes to the strategic alliance literature by considering the role of human emotion and social behaviour (Chandler et al., 2020;Gu et al., 2016) and their interaction with organizational aspects such as AMC (Ng, Dayan and Di Benedetto, 2019).That is, while the extant literature identifies several organizationalspecific enablers for AMC, including alliance function (Simonin, 1997), experience and structure (Schilke and Goerzen, 2010) and training approach (Draulans et al., 2003), we introduce SEW-P as a novel cognitive factor associated with AMC of family firms.The three alliance capabilities are organizational routines that demand organizational support and investment to emerge and flourish (Wang and Rajagopalan, 2015).Yet, we show that the cognitive effect of the family business managers and owners (reflected by the desire to retain a strong family identity, exercise authority, conserve clan membership and appoint trusted family members to important posts) can be positively associated with AMC.This is an important contribution, as exploring the effect of 'managerial perceptions and cognitions in shaping firms' capability investment decisions' (Wang and Rajagopalan, 2015, p. 255) has been widely identified as an important future research theme (Al-Tabbaa et al., 2019;Vandaie and Zaheer, 2014).
Secondly, we provide new insights into the effect of turbulence in the institutional environment (as a boundary condition) within the domains of family business and strategic alliance.In this respect, our findings suggest that the positive association between SEW-P and alliance capabilities becomes stronger when the perceived PI increases.This is an important contribution as it offers a different view to the existing assumption that country risk (including political would have a direct negative effect on alliance performance (Luo, 2007;Nielsen, 2007).Instead, our analysis demonstrates that this external condition has a positive indirect effect on alliance success.By exposing the explicit role of AMC as a fundamental and underpinning component in this mechanism, we add to the emerging stream of literature that investigates business response to political instability (Sidki Darendeli and Hill, 2016;Korbi, Ben-Slimane and Triki, 2021).Choosing partners under uncertainty (which is based on heuristics by having access to external information) (i.e.alliance proactiveness), managing potential opportunistic behavior that is driven by weak institutions (i.e.alliance coordination) and the ability to acquire and process relevant information/knowledge reflect (i.e.alliance learning) organizational routines that enable family firms to establish effective alliance and navigate through turbulent environments.
In addition to theoretical, the study provides managerial implications.The analysis shows that family firms, which are concerned about their SEW-P, are likely to succeed in their strategic alliances when alliance capabilities are deployed.Therefore, managers in such companies should aim to systematically develop and utilize these capabilities to benefit from their interactions with external partners.However, building organizational capabilities is typically a time-and resource-consuming process (Bahl et al., 2021), and thus cannot be accomplished without a longterm commitment by the top management team.The evidence provided in the study can demonstrate that this would be a worthy investment.By leveraging these capabilities, the family business can become proactive, rather than reactive, when looking outside their organizational boundaries.Being 'first-mover', these firms can use the proactiveness, coordination and learning skills to sense and seize collaborative opportunities once they emerge in the markets, while being able to carefully tackle potential SEW loss-averse attitudes towards external activities (Tomo et al., 2021) that can lead to missing the economic gains of strategic alliance.Furthermore, our study highlights the effect of PI on firms' behaviour.Past research suggests that when encountering destabilizing contextual conditions (such as political conflict and institutional transitions), firms can seek to establish personal and organizational ties with external entities (Bahl et al., 2021;Witte, Burger and Pennings, 2020) to maintain their competitiveness (e.g.access limited resources) and minimize environmental uncertainty (e.g.obtain knowledge that cannot be accessed via typical market transactions).However, empirical studies suggest that the collaboration under such circumstances can be problematic due to the high transaction costs needed to compensate for the weak institutional protection (Allard et al., 2012).Our analysis offers a reconciling view on this, by revealing that the managers of family firms should rely on the alliance capabilities more under the condition of perceived PI.These capabilities will act as a ring-fence (Al-Tabbaa et al., 2019) by enabling the selection of appropriate partners (proactiveness capability) and reconfiguring the co-interaction process to reach a mutually acceptable formula that considers the family SEW-P (i.e.coordination capability), while setting the foundation for a collective working strategy (i.e.learning capability).
Lastly, our study comes with some limitations, which point the way for future research on the topic.First, our sample was drawn from Libyan family firms, which may limit the generalization of our results.Therefore, conducting similar studies in other politically unstable contexts would be required.Furthermore, as our sample focuses ex-

Post-hoc analyses
To confirm the findings of our study, we conducted a robustness analysis using the PROCESS macro software (Preacher andHayes, 2004, 2008).Table A1 presents the estimates, standard errors and corresponding confidence interval (CI) lower and upper levels.The 95% bias-corrected CI for the moderation effect, using bootstrapping 5000 samples, was found to be positive and not contain zero (Preacher and Hayes, 2008).These results thus support the moderation effects of PI, hence formally confirming H2.To interpret the significance of the moderation effect, we followed recommended practices (e.g.Aiken and West, 1991) and plotted: (1) the effect of the interaction between SEW-P and perceived PI on alliance proactiveness; (2) the effect of the interaction between SEW-P and PI on alliance coordination; and (3) the effect of the interaction between SEW-P and perceived PI on alliance learning.The results are shown in graph form in Figures A1a-c. Figure A1a shows that alliance proactiveness increases significantly only at higher levels of SEW-P and perceived PI, while Figure A1b shows that alliance coordination increases at high levels of SEW-P and perceived PI and Figure A1c reveals that alliance learning increases at higher levels of SEW-P and perceived PI.The three graphs provide support for H2a-c.Furthermore, we tested the mediation effect of AMC for SEW-P and the alliance success relationship using the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013).As shown in Table A2, our results were found to provide support for the mediation effect of alliance proactiveness for the SEW-P and alliance success relationship (indirect effect = 0.06; LLCI = 0.001 -ULCI = 0.13), thus confirming H3a.Further, the results were found to provide support for H3b because the effect of SEW-P on alliance success is channelled through alliance coordination (indirect effect = 0.05; LLCI = 0.01 -ULCI = 0.11).Our findings were also found to confirm that alliance learning mediates the effect of SEW-P on alliance success (indirect effect = 0.06; LLCI = 0.01 -ULCI = 0.12), thereby supporting H3c.
Additionally, the mediation effect was verified using the Sobel (2.24, p < 0.05), Aroian (2.23, p < 0.05) and Goodman (2.26, p < 0.05) tests, which confirmed that the relationship between SEW-P and alliance success is mediated by alliance proactiveness.The mediating role of alliance coordination for the relationship between SEW-P and alliance success was also supported by the results of the Sobel (2.37, p < 0.05), Aroian (2.35, p < 0.05) and Goodman (2.39, p < 0.05) tests, which also confirmed -Sobel test: 2.43, p < 0.05; Aroian test: 2.41, p < 0.05; Goodman test: 2.45, p < 0.05 -the mediating role of alliance learning for the SEW-P and alliance success relationship.
Moreover, while we conceptualized alliance proactiveness, coordination and learning as three unique dimensions of AMC, it could be argued that their interaction may have a greater predictive effect for alliance success.Hence, we tested the mediation effect of the interaction of alliance proactiveness, coordination and learning in the SEW-P and alliance success relationship.However, we did not find support for it (indirect effect = 0.04; p > 0.05, LLCI = −0.05-ULCI = 0.14).
firm size (measured as total number of employees); firm age(20, and 4   = more than 20); alliance experience (the number of alliances that a firm had formed during the previous five years(Schilke and Goerzen, 2010) © 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management.
Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management.
Bold on the diagonal is the square-root of the AVE; SD = standard deviation; † = dummy variable; significance levels:

Figure
Figure A1.(a) Interaction effect of SEW-P and perceived political instability on alliance proactiveness.(b) Interaction effect of SEW-P and perceived political instability on alliance coordination.(c) Interaction effect of SEW-P and perceived political instability on alliance learning.[Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] © 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management.
, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8551.12626by University Of Vaasa, Wiley Online Library on [17/01/2023].See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions)on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License © 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management.14678551 , 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8551.12626by University Of Vaasa, Wiley Online Library on [17/01/2023].See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions)on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License family businesses (Shareia and Irvine, 2014), who are typically the decision-makers in establishing firm alliances and other external relationships © 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management.14678551
. To ensure the applicability of these measures to the Libyan context, we obtained , 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8551.12626by University Of Vaasa, Wiley Online Library on [17/01/2023].See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions)on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License © 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management.14678551

Table 3 .
Details of measurement item, Cronbach's 14678551, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8551.12626by University Of Vaasa, Wiley Online Library on [17/01/2023].See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions)on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License The Role of Political Instability and Alliance Management Capability 15

Table 5 .
Results of structural model estimation Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Model 8 Model 9 Model 10 Model 11 Model 12 Model 13 Model 14 Model 15 © 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management.
, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8551.12626by University Of Vaasa, Wiley Online Library on [17/01/2023].See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions)on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License © 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management.14678551

Table A2 .
Mediation effects using PROCESS macro, Sobel, Aroian and Goodman tests , 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8551.12626by University Of Vaasa, Wiley Online Library on [17/01/2023].See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions)on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License The Role of Political Instability and Alliance Management Capability 27 Omar Al-Tabbaa is an Associate Professor in International Business and a Director of Research at Leeds University Business School.His key research areas include inter-organizational relationships (including SME co-internationalization, university-industry ties, global value chains strategy and social co-innovation), business model innovation and scalability of digital platforms, and the methodology of systematic literature review.Abdalhamed Nasr is a research fellow at the University of Huddersfield Business School.His research focuses on the phenomenon of strategic alliance and family business development in emerging economies.Nadia Zahoor is a Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde, UK.She completed her PhD in Management at the University of Huddersfield, UK.Her research interests are strategic alliances, global strategy, innovation and organizational resilience.Her research has been published in mainstream journals, including the International Marketing Review, Journal of Business Research, Business Strategy and the Environment, International Small Business Journal and International Journal of Management Reviews.Muthu De Silva is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Birkbeck, University of London, UK.Her research contributes to our knowledge on co-creation.She has published in world-leading (ABS 4 * /3 * ) journals such as Research Policy, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, British Journal of Management, International Small Business Journal, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, R&D Management, Technovation, International Business Review and Studies in Higher Education.