Strategic Alliance Success Factors

Abstract

SUMMARY There is recognition that competition is shifting from a “firm versus firm perspective” to a “supply chain versus supply chain perspective.” In response to this shift, firms seeking competitive advantage are participating in cooperative supply chain arrangements, such as strategic alliances, which combine their individual strengths and unique resources. Buyer‐supplier sourcing relationships are a primary focus of alliance improvement efforts. While interest in such arrangements remains strong, it is well accepted that creating, developing, and maintaining a successful alliance is a very daunting task. This research addresses several critical issues regarding that challenge. First, what factors contribute most to long‐term alliance success? Second, what conditions define the presence of those success factors? Third, do buyers and suppliers in an alliance agree on those success factors and defining conditions? The research results demonstrate a remarkably consistent perspective among alliance partners regarding key success factors, despite the acknowledgment that the resultant success is based on a relatively even, but not equal, exchange of benefits and resources. Additionally, within an alliance's intended “win‐win” foundation, suppliers must recognize their innate dependence on customers. Finally, significant opportunities for improvement exist with respect to alliance goal clarification, communication, and performance evaluation.

Towards a sustainable fashion retail supply chain in Europe: Organisation and performance

“…initiating cooperation and favouring new cooperative initiatives. A sustainable logistics initiative can play the role of a pilot activity as it has a peculiar strength point: it allows overcoming one of the main reasons for the failure of SCM initiatives, which is risk and gain sharing (Whipple and Frankel, 2000). When the major aim of cooperation is, for example, to reduce CO2 emissions or to optimise load factor, in order to comply with new regulation or to reduce the delivery cost, the possibility for developing a successful collaboration becomes higher.…”

The Impact of Institutional Pressures on Green Supply Chain Management and Firm Performance: Top Management Roles and Social Capital

“…In general, social capital, accumulated by frequent communication, timely information sharing, shared problem solving and good relationships, provide opportunities to improve operational performance [97,98].…”

Developing Alliance Capabilities

“…Referring to different theoretical backgrounds, the contributions of the studies analyzing interfirm antecedents of alliance performance center around critical success factors for managing alliances (e.g. Killing, 1983;Harrigan, 1986;Pekar and Allio, 1994;Dussauge and Garrette, 1995;Douma, 1997;Whipple and Frankel, 2000). In general, studies of this type suggest a set of success factors that considerably influence the performance of the dyadic relationship.…”