The synthesis of the data into this table was derived by transcribing interview extracts through the mechanical and cataloguing process described in Chapter 5 to present this Table 6.2.2.
Table 6.22 below summarises the results of the interviews, which formed the basis of the case studies.
Table 6.22 Summary of Responses of Companies A, B, and C Simplified critical Questions Summarised response Core issues in the telecommunicati ons industries
•Market is very volatile, has not settled yet and consists of relationships and contracts.
•Innovation is a race with few players.
•Co-opetition (cooperation and competition) co-exists yet network arrangements are important.
Growth factors •Promising with options through creativity and innovation. Empirical
meaning of alliance
•Outsourcing, vendors, major contractors or tenders,
major customer/supplier, network clusters, arrangements and linkage partners.
Size •Size does matter in an alliance where small and fragmented companies need big, strong and successful telecommunications firms that have established infrastructure foundations in the market.
Sustainability •Not predictable over time.
Success •Is found to lean towards financial gain. •Linkage partners need to achieve goals.
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Factors that contribute to alliance failure
•Poor management of the relationship as a result partners not producing required outcome.
•Lack of effective communication.
•Commitment and Trust, Power and Control, Compatibility, Cultural Respect and Alliance Worthwhileness are relative factors because at times, some are important other may not be so and are not universal.
There are several conclusions that may be drawn from the three case studies of companies A, B and C and these are summarised below.
Power and control are an important factor when undertaking alliances; the Senior Alliance Manager considers it important on an ongoing basis for their strategic and operational decisions.
Smaller companies have power and control in alliances through their competitive
advantage capabilities. It was also felt that there is no guarantee in the sustainability of an alliance and if there is inadequate communication between the parties then the alliance will drift towards failure.
The third respondent was the Chief Executive of Virtual Communities Group and this company is in the service area of telecommunications. The company has recently acquired several internet service providers. The respondent explained that alliances were similar to contracts although they are not written contracts. It was related during the interview that the success of an alliance is equated to return on investment or some tangible measures and joint accomplishments of individual goals. From their
perspective an alliance must be founded on good business management guidelines. The above three summaries reveal important issues. It is clear that different sized companies enter into strategic alliances. Power and control tend to be more important issues for the larger companies than for the smaller ones, reflecting the fact that the smaller ones tend to have less power and control due to their nature and size. However, the smaller ones can have power and control depending on their level of expertise. It is also important that alliances do not continue indefinitely because the respondents felt that alliances can ultimately come to an end. During the tenure of the
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Ultimately, an alliance should make good business sense and should provide a return on investment to the parties involved. It is up to each alliance partner to determine its acceptable return on investment before entering into an alliance.
The cooperative factors in alliance relationships were not seen to be influential if effective communication is not present. Then the alliance tends to fail rather than
achieve success. Sustainability is not considered to be important in a dynamic unstable environment with lots of changes happening (rapidly), where alliances are formed and dissolved in response to transient business priorities. The size of the relationship tends to matter because smaller companies seeking established infrastructure and markets go into alliances with bigger companies, and bigger companies consider linkages with smaller companies because of their technical and technological expertise and specialisation.
The conclusions from the qualitative interview results regarding the six factors are presented in Figure 6.1.
Effective Communication Commitment & Trust Power & Control Compatability Cultural Respect Alliance Worthwhile
Vanaja Karagiannidis Page 126 All three respondents from the three companies A, B and C agreed that effective communication is important for alliance success. Additionally the respondent from company C expressed the view that the presence of commitment and trust between parties builds the relationship. All three respondents also perceived that the effective management of power and control were important for effective alliance relationships. All respondents agreed that there can be compatibility between alliance partners even though not all parties in the alliance have the same skills but they need to have
specialised synergistic skills.
With respect to cultural respect and alliance worthwhileness, all three respondents did not provide any comment as it being important for effective alliance relationships. However, company A commented that all six factors are relative in terms of
circumstances in determining alliance effectiveness.
In conclusion the results for cooperative factors, effective communication factors, and that of effective alliance success are similar whether they were derived from quantitative or qualitative research. With regards to size, both quantitative and qualitative results support the study regarding the fact that size does matter. However quantitative findings of sustainability show some influence to cooperative factor (cultural respect), but not from qualitative findings, as there were only three managers who were
interviewed from the lucrative telecommunications industry who perceived sustainability as relative to effective alliance success.
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