Alliances in the financial services sector - exploring its organisational learning mechanisms

The financial services sector is undergoing many changes, including the use of new technologies for offering new services. An alliance can be formed with younger technology start-ups to facilitate the internal innovation process of financial services providers. On the one hand, dealing with new knowledge (e.g., technological) requires an organisational capability (i.e., absorptive capacity) and the financial services provider's social capital also contributes to a successful knowledge acquisition. On the other hand, organisational learning mechanisms are also paramount in acquiring new knowledge during the innovation process since they drive a company's absorptive capacity. This paper will explore the under-researched organisational learning mechanisms during an alliance in the financial services sector. In particular the influences of policy and structural learning mechanisms on the social capital constituents (i.e., social interactions, relationship quality and supplier network ties) should be interesting areas for further exploration and a first measurement construct will be proposed in this conceptual paper.