Alliances and Joint Ventures

Abstract

This article defines collaborations between firms that involve the creation of a separate, autonomous, and legally recognized firm — a ‘newco’ — as a joint venture. Joint ventures usually, but not always, involve parties who have contributed equity in creating the ‘newco’, so the term joint venture in this article refers to equity joint ventures. Joint ventures typically involve collaborations between two parties, but there can be more. This article defines an alliance as a cooperative agreement between at least two firms. These firms combine their resources and capabilities in the pursuit of collective and individual strategic objectives. This article begins with a discussion of the frequency with which firms rely on joint ventures and alliances and the motivations that lead economic actors to develop joint ventures and/or alliances. It provides a detailed discussion of the theory underlying partner selection in joint ventures and alliances.

Foreword: networking for innovation in agrifood SMEs

“…Temporary working projects, as shown in Table 2, can be understood as inter-organizational projects. For Oliver (1990), this IOR exists when two actors work together to plan and implement a specific activity -a project -without forming a new organization (a NewCo, according to Dacin et al (2008)). Yet, the author reinforces the idea that resource scarcity is a strong prerequisite for the development of IORs, because when the resources magnanimity in the environment is insufficient, the organizations do not have the capacity to generate them individually.…”