Environmental alliances are a common response to societal sustainability demands. In environmental alliances, firms collaboratively exploit and explore environmental technologies to address market opportunities while simultaneously generating positive environmental impacts. A striking idiosyncrasy is that in addition to economic value, environmental alliances generate two types of external value: environmental value from positive effects on air, water, land and biodiversity, and knowledge value from innovations in environmental technologies. Research on motivations for environmental alliances is dispersed and underdeveloped compared to the well‐established literature on motivations for strategic alliances that emphasize economic value. This study therefore develops a classification of motivations for environmental alliances by combining the literature on strategic alliances and that on environmental and knowledge value. The resulting classification includes motivations for environmental alliances to generate environmental and knowledge value as well as motivations to create economic value by internalizing environmental and knowledge value. A systematic review of 123 articles on environmental inter‐firm alliances identifies specific motivations to populate the new classification. We show that alliance partners are motivated to share sustainable resources, reduce sustainability risk, respond to stakeholders or invest in specific sustainable assets to generate external value. They collaborate to reduce costs or enhance competitive advantage, reputation or legitimacy to internalize external value. The resource‐based view, resource‐dependence view, institutional theory and transaction cost economics have not previously distinguished between motivations to generate and internalize external value. We extend their area of application from strategic alliances to environmental alliances, and thus beyond the exclusive pursuit of economic value.

中文翻译：

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环境联盟的动机：产生和内化环境与知识价值

环境联盟是对社会可持续性需求的普遍回应。在环境联盟中，公司合作开发和探索环境技术以解决市场机会，同时产生积极的环境影响。一个惊人的特质是，除了经济价值外，环境联盟还产生两种外部价值：来自对空气，水，土地和生物多样性的积极影响的环境价值，以及来自环境技术创新的知识价值。与关于强调经济价值的战略联盟动机的著名文献相比，环境联盟动机的研究分散且发展不足。因此，本研究通过结合有关战略联盟以及有关环境和知识价值的文献，对环境联盟的动机进行了分类。由此产生的分类包括环境联盟产生环境和知识价值的动机，以及通过内化环境和知识价值来创造经济价值的动机。对123条关于企业间环境联盟的文章的系统综述确定了填充新分类的特定动机。我们表明，联盟合作伙伴的动机是共享可持续资源，降低可持续风险，对利益相关者做出反应或投资特定的可持续资产以产生外部价值。他们合作降低成本或增强竞争优势，内在价值的声誉或合法性。基于资源的观点，基于资源的观点，制度理论和交易成本经济学以前并未区分产生和内部化外部价值的动机。我们将其应用范围从战略联盟扩展到环境联盟，从而超越了对经济价值的独家追求。