Strategic Alliances In A Globalizing World

Strategic Alliances in a Globalizing World contains contributions by leading scholars in the field of strategic alliance research. The 11 chapters in this volume cover a number of significant topics that speak to the growing role of strategic alliances in a globalizing business world. The chapter topics cover both the broader issues, such as the creation of competitive advantage and expanding into institutionally different countries, and the more focused problems of alliance formation, contractual governance, governance structure choice, the development of alliance capability, the containment of opportunism, relationship management, sensemaking, and the intersection of culture and legitimacy. The chapters include empirical as well as conceptual treatments of the selected topics, and collectively present a wide-ranging review of the noteworthy areas of alliance research in the globalization context.

Looks at the benefits of business alliances, discusses actual cases, and offers advice on managing strategic alliances and networks

Growing economic globalisation has increased international business competition and international economic interdependence. From this perspective, many firms have formed business partnerships and most nations have had to re-evaluate their economic interdependence. This book explores changes that have occurred or have been proposed in this regard. It provides new insights into business partnerships and international economic interdependence, given growing economic globalisation, and explores the managerial and socio-economic consequences of those ideas. The contributions in this book have been divided into four parts. Those in Part II concentrate on the specification of partnerships and reasons for business partnerships in the context of a globalisation. The idea of global networks in which some "hard" and "soft" forms of partnerships would appear and mix is introduced and discussed according to the partners involved (nations, unions, firms and consumers) and the economic activities (whether tangible or abstract). Globalisation also has a number of consequences for business co-ordination, in particular when they are based on outsourcing strategies in which cost reduction is balanced with knowledge transfers. These are amongst the issues explored in Part III. The difficulty to monitor and predict the effects of global partnerships tends to increase the importance of cultural and psychological variables such as trust and commitment. Therefore the role of attitudes and perceptions is very important. Whatever the agreement and the conjoined management among partner firms, the attitude of the other agents can produce asymmetric affects on these firms and considerably bias their partnership strategy. Such biases are particularly likely from consumers. Their attitude towards globalisation is not the only bias that may occur. Their loyalty is also an important issue in a globalising world, particularly in the service sector where lots of partnerships have been made on a global scale (eg banks, airlines, leisure). These are amongst the relationship marketing issues explored in Part IV. In Part V, the factors introduced in the previous chapters are considered from a regional and cultural perspective, where nations and regions themselves are engaged in global partnership. In this context, discrepancy often develops between the domestic and the international globalisation strategies, as well as between the capital and labour markets. The resulting complexity is particularly problematic for the developing and peripheral economies. Novel insights about partnership emerge, as studied in this concluding part of the book.

John Dunning is the leading authority in the field of international business. His latest work analyses: * future developments in global business * a comparison of US and Japanese investment in Europe * competitiveness, trade and integration * spatial dimensions of globalization

This book presents the latest trends and drivers of globalisation in major OECD countries and their implications for industrial performance and government policies. It analyses regional and sectoral trends in telecommunications, automobiles, steel, pharmaceuticals, airlines and financial services.

Firms all over the world are entering into strategic alliances. Successful alliance management, however, requires corporations to adapt their management models to the demands of this new mode of organization. New tools, techniques and ideas need to be introduced in order to fully benefit from the potential advantages of alliances. Firms are becoming embedded in alliances to such an extent that the autonomous firm no longer exists. Instead, the allianced enterprise has emerged as a viable form of organization. To guide managers in developing their allianced enterprise, this book provides an overview of the latest in alliance thinking. It describes such key issues as how to position a company in a network, how to develop an alliance capability, how to design alliance constellations, the skills required for alliance managers, the impact of the Internet on partnering, and much more. In this book, some of the world''s leading thinkers (academics, consultants and practitioners) on alliances share their latest, insightful ideas. Aimed at a management audience, the book is concise and practical. It deals with all aspects of alliance management, updating the reader on the state-of-the-art in this challenging field. Contents: The Changing Face of Alliance Management: Managerial Imperatives for the Network Economy (A Vasudevan et al.); E-Alliances: What''s New About Them? (J Bell); The Corporation Is Dead OC Long Live the Constellation (B Gomes-Casseres & J Bamford); Does Alliance Management Differ from Network Management? (D Geurts & H van der Zee); The Laws of Alliance Formation (C Garc a-Pont); Preemptive Alliances in the E-Economy (r) (L Segil); The Future of Alliance Capability: Towards a Basic Necessity for Firm Survival? (A-P de Man); A Dancing Elephant Is Still an Elephant: The Challenges Facing Multinationals Working in Alliance-Mode (J E van Aken); Four Critical Skills for Managing High Performance Alliances (R P Lynch); Tech Alliances: Managing Your Alliance Portfolio (B Beerkens & C Lemmens); Making Alliances Work: Lessons from the Airline Industry (P Bouw); A Culture of Cooperation? Not Yet (A Parkhe). Readership: Top management, middle management, alliance managers and anti-trust officials, as well as researchers and graduate students in economics and business administration."

Covers research on strategic alliances, and serves to lay out a research agenda on collaborative strategy and alliance management. This book covers the theoretical foundations that guide work on inter-firm collaboration, ranging from sociological perspectives to real options theory to diverse traditions within organizational economics.