In light of the rapid changes in the business environment and the increased intensity of competition, it is difficult for companies to maintain their market position and the sustainability of their ...business. Therefore, all these changes affect companies as the competition in the past was between the company and another company. However, the way of competition in our world today has changed in a way that a group of companies competes with another group of companies. Hence, the current study aims to address strategic alliances as an entry point in achieving entrepreneurial success, as one of the modern and important topics in the business world resulting from rapid developments and global openness based on transcending geographical boundaries in today's world. The impact of the dimensions of strategic alliances in achieving the pioneering success of commercial companies were investigated. The research field includes commercial companies in the Dohuk governorate in the Kurdistan region. The research sample was selected from managers in senior management and middle management for a number of companies, which amounted to (60) individuals for data collection purposes. Data analysis was performed for the field side using the statistical software (SPSS V26). The results of the research revealed that strategic alliances have a role in achieving entrepreneurial success and recommended the need to pay attention to the types of alliances that would enhance entrepreneurship in commercial companies.
The purpose of the research was to investigate whether the comp5anies involved in strategic business alliances (henceforth referred to as the SBA) have a higher level of open innovation and better ...business results in the metal industry in the EU country, namely Slovenia. The survey was carried out in 115 companies, where the aforementioned relations and their influence were studied applying appropriate statistical methods (e.g. the Mann-Whitney Test, Chi-Square statistics, t-test, etc.). The sample encompassed four clusters and R&D centres from metalprocessing industry. The results showed that SBA have a significantly strong impact on companies' open innovation as well as more efficient cooperation with universities and research institutions. Among the companies involved in SBA, the portion of innovations generated in cooperation with their business partners accounted for 57.7%, while those, not involved in SBA, the same indicator amounts to 19%. In addition, the results showed that the majority of business results, in companies involved in SBA, were above average, compared to the industry sector average values. The value added per employee within companies involved in the SBA was significantly higher than the industry average, as well as the profits; difference was more than threefold. It may be concluded that SBA represent an important bridge in the transformation from a closed innovation model to a model of open innovation, resulting in better business performance. Important implication for companies is related to the message that cooperation with competitors may bring value added to all companies involved.
We investigate how geographic distance influences which firms engage each other in research and development (R&D) collaborations. Given advances in technology, geographic distance might not be ...expected to affect who partners with whom, yet recent research has reported on the localization of exchanges in numerous market settings. We identify factors that shape the degree to which geographic distance matters to alliance formation by considering the heterogeneity in adverse selection risk across exchange partners. Specifically, we argue that the effects of geographic distance depend on the extent to which partners are able to evaluate each others’ resources and prospects. Empirical evidence from R&D collaborations in the semiconductor industry indicates that the likelihood of alliance formation is negatively related to geographic distance, even within clusters. The extent to which alliance formation falls off with geographic distance is diminished when the firms have prior ties, operate in the same product market, or possess similar technological knowledge.
This paper explores the interplay between social structure and economic action by examining some of the evolutionary dynamics of an emergent network that coalesces into a small-world system. The ...study highlights the small-world system's evolutionary dynamics at both the macro level of the network and the micro level of an individual actor. This dual analytical lens helps establish that, in competitive and information-intensive settings, a small-world system could be a highly dynamic structure that follows an inverted U-shaped evolutionary pattern, wherein an increase in the small-worldliness of the system is followed by its later decline as a result of three factors: (1) the recursive relationship between the evolving social structure and individual actors' formation of bridging ties, which eventually homogenizes the information space and decreases actors' propensity to form bridging ties, creating a globally separated network; (2) self-containment of the small-world network, or increasing homogenization of the social system, which makes the small world less accepting of and less attractive to new actors, thereby limiting formation of bridging ties to outside clusters; and (3) fragmentation of the small-world network, or the small-world system's inability to retain current clusters. The study uses data on interorganizational tie formation in the global computer industry in the period from 1996 to 2005 to test the hypothesized relationships.
Research linking interorganizational networks to innovation has focused on spanning structural boundaries as a means of knowledge recombination. Increasingly, firms also partner across institutional ...boundaries (countries, industries, technologies) in their search for new knowledge. When both structural and institutional separation affect knowledge recombination, aggregate characterizations of ego network attributes mask distinct recombination processes that lead to distinct types of innovation outcomes. We address this issue by focusing on triads as the locus of recombination in networks. We partition firms’ networks into three configurations of open triads—foreign, domestic, and mixed—based on the distribution of the broker and its partners across or within institutional boundaries. We argue that each configuration embodies distinct recombination processes, with foreign triads offering high access to novel knowledge, domestic triads facilitating relatively efficient knowledge integration, and mixed triads balancing the two. We apply this approach to a global research and development alliance network in the biotechnology industry, using countries as institutional boundaries. The results show that domestic triads affect innovation volume (i.e., the productivity of innovation) more strongly than mixed or foreign triads. In contrast, foreign triads have a greater impact on innovation radicalness (i.e., the path-breaking nature of the innovation) than mixed or domestic triads. The findings suggest that different brokerage configurations embody unique recombination processes, leading to distinct innovation outcomes. Our research provides a deeper understanding of how networks and institutions jointly influence distinct aspects of innovation.
The e-companion is available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1165
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Management researchers emphasize the prevalence and importance of firms’ strategic alliance portfolios in determining various firm outcomes. We extend this literature by empirically testing how two ...aspects of alliance portfolio partner diversity (industry and organizational type diversity) affect both the level and reliability of firm performance. Using the multiplicative heteroscedasticity estimation technique on a sample of 178 of the largest multinational firms in the automobile and telecommunications industries across the twenty-year time period (1995 to 2014), we demonstrate that firms with greater partner industry diversity in their strategic alliance portfolios enjoy greater performance coupled with greater reliability of performance. In contrast, firms with greater partner organizational type diversity in their strategic alliance portfolios have lower performance coupled with lower reliability of performance.
Strategic alliances offer significant opportunities to organisations, including the ability to expand their capabilities and to optimize value. In exploring the question of whether firms with ...differing value expectations choose to enter strategic alliances with firms of different capabilities, this study adopts a qualitative research approach using five Business to Business (B2B) manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This study focuses on improving our understanding of three related questions, first, whether or not they aim to capture or create value from the alliance; second, what is the nature of their capabilities and third, what is the inter-relationship between value and capabilities in SME alliance formation. A qualitative research approach enabled in-depth investigation and facilitated the emergence of relevant themes; customer orientation and resource optimisation. The insights derived from the study should help SMEs in partner selection and alignment thereby increasing chances of alliance success and longevity, and in turn SME sustainability and survival.
This article considers whether differing capabilities and value expectations impact strategic alliance formation in SMEs. It suggests that SMEs should evaluate their goals, capabilities, value orientation, customer orientation and resource orientation before forming strategic alliances. The findings suggest that value and capability orientations are intertwined in influencing strategic alliance formation; notably in SMEs the following are interrelated,•individual alliance capabilities and value creation; dyadic or portfolio capabilities and value capture•individual alliance capabilities, value creation orientation, customer orientation and resource integration management•alliance portfolio capabilities, value capture orientation, customer orientation and resource management orientation•alliance dyad capabilities, value capture orientation, customer orientation and resource management orientation
Innovation with a social purpose is strictly linked to entrepreneurship and economic development. However, those startups that pursue a social mission often operate in really novel markets and raise ...some scepticism in the eyes of investors. Startups can improve their business performance by leveraging on equity and non-equity based strategic alliances, so to pursue growth. However, sustainable growth requires to attract the right investments at the right stage of development of the startup. This study draws on international business theory and proposes a novel framework that explains the mechanisms regulating strategic alliances and firm performance in a startups context. We use a sample of 3913 UK high-tech startups engaging in social innovation to test our hypotheses and we derive an explanation for some of the mechanisms behind strategic alliances effect on startups performance, startups scalability and the balance needed between performance and the pursuit of a social mission.
This paper employs comparative longitudinal case study research to investigate why and how strong dyadic interfirm ties and two alternative network architectures (a 'strong ties network' and a 'dual ...network') impact the innovative capability of the lead firm in an alliance network. I answer these intrinsically cross-level research questions by examining how three design-intensive furnishings manufacturers managed their networks of joint-design alliances with consulting industrial design firms over more than 30 years. Initially, in order to explore the sample lead firms' alliance behavior, I advance an operationalization of interorganizational tie strength. Next, I unveil the strengths of strong ties and the weaknesses of a strong ties network. Finally, I show that the ability to integrate a large periphery of heterogeneous weak ties and a core of strong ties is a distinctive lead firm's relational capability, one that provides fertile ground for leading firms in knowledge-intensive alliance networks to gain competitive advantages whose sustainability is primarily based on the dynamic innovative capability resulting from leveraging a dual network architecture.
Renewable energy development is important in the current era due to the attention paid to environmental issues and energy demand growth. On the other hand, the growth and expansion of the use of RE ...requires cooperation and participation in the Renewable Energy Supply Chain (RESC). The strategic alliance between the parties involved in the field of RE can play an important role in reducing risk and significant growth in RESC. Also, due to various capabilities such as transparency, traceability, decentralization, security, and immutability of information, blockchain plays an important role in improving trust and strengthening cooperation in strategic alliances between partners in RESC. Therefore, this study proposes a decision-making framework under uncertainty for integrating blockchain and strategic alliance in RESC. The proposed framework involves the CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) and Fuzzy Combined Compromise Solution (F-CoCoSo) techniques. Also, validation and sensitivity analysis are performed using several fuzzy decision-making techniques. The findings indicated that matching energy supply and demand through information sharing on the blockchain platform and cooperating with companies in the RESC was recognized as the most important solution.
•Integration of blockchain and strategic alliance in renewable energy supply chain.•Offering a decision framework using CRITIC-CoCoSo techniques to assess solutions.•Suggesting a robust approach based on several fuzzy MCDM methods in real-case.•Proposing a further application of blockchain in the renewable energy supply chain.•Presenting energy supply and demand match using blockchain as the best solution.