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Inter-firm alliances have become an established entrepreneurial strategy among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)(Van Gils and Zwart 2009). In a fastchanging and unstable business environment, smaller firms increasingly opt for long-term cooperative agreements with one or more partners in the pursuit of various entrepreneurial goals, including: entry in new lines of business, access to international markets, achievement of cost-based competitive advantages, and resource pooling and risk sharing in innovation projects (eg Teng 2007; Wiklund and Shepherd 2009; Hoskisson et al. 2011). Since previous studies suggest that alliance success largely depends on the appropriateness of the governance mechanisms adopted by the parties (Dyer and Singh 1998), the aim of this research is to shed some light on the process of selection of alliance governance mechanisms by SMEs. In the pursuit of this goal …