A Study Of The Cooperative Effects Of Competitive Strategic Alliance

Competitive alliance formed by direct competitors is an emerging strategic mode, which is absorbing more and more attentions from researchers and enterprises. Firms hope to improve their strategic position and competency through forming alliances with competitors by making use of partners'critical resources, as well as to impact and improve the industrial environment. For firms participate in competitive alliances, cooperative effect or outcome is their first concern. Unfortunately, due to the short history, there are limited literatures on this topic. Therefore, purposing to evaluate the cooperative effect of competitive alliance comprehensively, our research is of theoretical and reality value.Aiming at competitive alliances, this paper systematically studies the framework of cooperative effect, and discusses the impacts of main determining factors, such as the characteristics of resources invested into alliances, the industrial competitive structure and the alliance structure, on the cooperative effect, as well as the relationships among different effects. The research methods we make use of include Concept model, Mathematic model, Structural equation model and mediation model. The purpose is to discuss the configuration of cooperative effect and its changing mechanism.We make great efforts on the following three aspects. First, we make effort on theoretical research. Based on literatures and theoretical analysis, the concept model about cooperative effects of competitive alliance is proposed. Second, we carry out mathematical research to study the typical cooperative effects, and try to get the balance point between competition and cooperation in competitive alliance. Third, empirical research is conducted. Based on the results of literature studies and mathematical analysis, empirical hypotheses are proposed. Then, we examine these hypotheses about cooperative effects and their determining factors and find out the pathes.In order to carry out mathematical and empirical analysis on the above issues, we first define the cooperative effect as an aggregate which includes both performance and risk. Then the cooperative effect is divided into endogenous effect and exogenous effect. Based on the above work, we carry out the analysis and get the following results.Firstly, in the aspect of endogenous performance, we find that competitive alliance is helpful to improve firm's ability on R&D, market entrance, market power and profitability only when the utilization rate of the shared resource is higher than a certain crital value. In the aspect of exogenous performance, the results demonstrate that allying with competitor can make contribution to increase the industry concentration. In the perspective of endogenous risk, we find that opportunistic risk will break the alliance if knowledge spillover is higher than a certain critical value. In the perspective of exogenous risk, it is shown that cooperating with competitors is helpful to decrease the perceived uncertainty risks in market.Secondly, by integrating the mathematical analysis result about performance and risks, we get the balancing condition from the aspect of the level of resource share or knowledge spillover. First, the level of resource share or knowledge spillover has to be lower than a certain critical value. Second, the efficiency of making use of the shared resource has to be higher than a certain critical value. Only when this condition is satisfied, competitive alliance can maintain and create value.Lastly, in the aspect of empirial research, we find out that the cooperative effect of competitive alliance is significantly impacted by both internal resources and external environment. In the aspect of direct influence, key factors such as characteristics of resources invested into alliance, the industrial competitive structures, and the alliance structures, have significant direct impacts on cooperative effect which includes both risk and performance. In the aspect of indirect influence, the impacts on alliance performance from resource and environment are realized through some mediators including alliance structure and risks. Further more, the mediating roles of alliance structure are very significant. Integrating the findings on both the direct and indirect impacts, the changing mechanism of cooperative effect of competitive alliance can be drawn.The findings of this research make certain contributions to the improvement of research system of competitive alliance, and provide some theoretical reference for the future studies in this area. Further more, by offering reference and guidance about how to reap competitive advantages through co-opetition, the results we get in this paper are beneficial for the spreading of co-opetition strategy in business.