International vertical alliances (IVAs) have garnered increasing scholarly interest in the strategy and international business (IB) literature. Our review of 111 papers published in major IB journals from 2000 to 2020 sheds light on the antecedents, key mediators, moderators and outcomes of IVAs. To generate insights, we juxtaposed forward and backward alliances and compared IVAs with their domestic vertical and horizontal counterparts. In this paper, we highlight key areas for future IVA research, including—but not limited to—broadening the scope of the investigation in order to integrate new theories and methods suited to examine such alliances in the IB field.

国际垂直联盟 (IVA) 已引起学术界对战略和国际商务 (IB) 文献的兴趣日益浓厚。我们对 2000 年至 2020 年在主要 IB 期刊上发表的 111 篇论文的回顾揭示了 IVA 的前因、关键中介、调节和结果。为了产生洞察力，我们将前向和后向联盟并列，并将 IVA 与其国内的纵向和横向同行进行比较。在本文中，我们强调了未来 IVA 研究的关键领域，包括但不限于扩大调查范围，以便整合适合检查 IB 领域此类联盟的新理论和方法。