Achieving Cooperation in Multiparty Alliances: a Social Dilemma Approach to Partnership Management

We propose a social dilemma approach to cooperation induction in multiparty alliances. We first establish that managing the inherent tension between cooperation and competition in alliances is essentially a social dilemma, where an individually rational but socially defecting choice may lead to a higher payoff for an individual partner but where, once all partners adopt such a strategy, the alliance will fail. We then develop propositions on how partners can improve their chances for cooperation, and we discuss the limitations of the social dilemma approach and its implications for future research.