I joined the Department of Accounting and Auditing as a PhD student in June 2009 and have since then completed and defended my PhD dissertation. Alongside teaching financial accounting I now continue the work on the data collected for the PhD project. My PhD was on strategic alliances and consisted of three review articles and two empirical articles.

The two empirical articles in my thesis were based on data collected from participants in Danida (the Danish International Development Agency) supported alliances between Danish firms and firms in developing countries.  From the point of view of Danida the immediate objective is to support alliances which should result in long-term, sustainable and commercially viable alliances. This is assumed to entail that knowledge is transferred from the Danish partner to the local partner. In turn this knowledge is expected to spread to other firms spurring economic growth and thus poverty reduction. In the empirical part of my project I focused on factors related to the first couple of links in this alleged causal chain: What are the consequences of financial support for the social exchange attributes trust and commitment that are pivotal for the development of viable alliances? Will these social exchange attributes within the alliance lead to knowledge spreading to other local firms than the local firms participating in the alliances?

The dissertation ”Donor supported strategic alliances” is available from the CBS library. The first review article in the dissertation has been accepted for publication in International Journal of Management Reviews and is available at the journal homepage for Early View