Research On Performance Of Strategic Alliance

Enterprises began to change their competitive relations with others from only competition to either competition or collaboration since 1980s. Strategic alliance is one of the most major forms. According to the research of Booz, Allen & Hamilton consulting company, about 12,000 international strategic alliances had been formed only from 1995 to 1997 in the world. Strategic alliance changes the traditional boundary of firms and begins to change the business environment of the word.Being a main means of cooperation, strategic alliance is a special organizational governance structure between market and organization. It is based on voluntary cooperative inter-firm arrangements aimed at attaining the given common strategic objectives. It can be classified into two categories according to the participating degree of the members in alliance. One is equity alliance, and the other is the contractual alliance. Furthermore, the latter consists of combination alliance and exchange alliance.Although strategic alliance is able to create a win-win situation through expanding market, learning advanced technology and management skills, sharing operation risk as well as achieving scale economics, its failure rate is too high. Approximately 50-70 percent of alliances can be considered as failure in accomplishing the partners' objectives. Despite a significant amount of researches, alliance performance remains one of the least understood aspects of alliances. Firstly, study on factors influencing on alliance performance is much scattered and unsystematic. The determinants of strategic alliance performance have not been explored adequately in the literature. Secondly, there is no coherent theoretical basis for the determinants of strategic alliance performance. And we know little about the linkages between the alliance performance and the characters of partner. Thirdly, there is no generally acknowledgeable norms and matrix which can be used to valuate alliance performance. So those problems will be discussed in this dissertation.The main reasons for alliance failure can be attributed to selecting wrong partner, lacking of trust, forming unsuitable governance structure, no effective matrix to evaluate performance. Thus below studies are completed in this dissertation. Firstly, the interior factors influencing on alliance performance that include the characteristics of partner, the characteristics of partner-fit, trust and collaborative know-how are analyzed systematically. Secondly, how to select suitable partner is discussed in either qualitative or quantitative. The alliance performance is severely influenced by the behaviors and characteristics of partner. Therefore, the relationships between various factors relative to partner and alliance performance should be comprehensively analyzed at first. The factors are of strategy, motives, culture, resources and capabilities, market status and so on. They influence on alliance performance through three medium variables, namely collective strengths, conflicts and inter-dependence. On the basis of qualitative analysis, the profits, risks and costs of each candidate partner are identified respectively. The third study is on how to select governance structure of alliance. Though several theories had been used to study strategic alliance, only transaction cost theory and resource-based view suit to analyze the problem of choosing governance structure of alliance. Here transaction cost theory is used to discuss how to select equity alliance and contractual alliance. Asset specificity, technological uncertainty, behavioral uncertainty and resources complementarity are the main determinants. And resource-based view is used to discuss how to select combination alliance and exchange alliance. Main factors consist of economy of scale, inimitability and imperfect mobility. Fourthly, the problem on how to improve the inter-trust among alliance members is discussed. Fifthly, the matrix of evaluating alliance performance is studied. The alliance performance is the extent that the strategic ob...