Resultados Valores de significancia Conclusiones

The trend toward strategic alliances in business has not brought about the results envisioned by the participants in many cases. Most studies tend to focus more on the

rm ns they fail. It is the risks and

auvinism and different ttitudes to business can all make the going rough. Problems can be particularly acute dete inants of their success rather than for the reaso

problems that need to be analysed more fully to determine the true reasons why over 60 percent of strategic alliances fail (Kalmbach and Roussel, 1999).

Cultural clash is probably one of the biggest problems that corporations in alliances face today. “These cultural problems consist of language, egos, ch

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between a publicly quoted Western holding company, keenly focused on shareholders value and Japanese partners who have different priorities (Kilburn, 1999, p22). The first thing that can cause problems is the language barrier that they might face. It is important for the companies that are working together to be able to communicate and understand each other well or they are doomed before they even start. From a different perspective, Steensma et al. (2000) indicated that national cultural traits directly influence strategic alliance formation and moderate the relationship between perceived technological uncertainty and alliance formation.

Risk sharing is the primary bonding tool in a partnership. A sense of commitment must be generated throughout the partnership. In many alliances cases one company will point e failure finger at the partnering company. Shifting the blame does not solve the

will surely lead to disaster in the future. Many companies enter into alliance to ombat industry competition. In this case, the company is probably already doomed and

ances where companies remain competitors in- ite of their strategic alliance. If it were to happen that one company would go off on its th

problem, but increases the tension between the partnering companies and often leads to alliance ruin (Lewis, 1992). Building trust is the most important and yet most difficult aspect of a successful alliance. Many alliances have failed due to lack of trust causing unsolved problems, lack of understanding and despondent relationships (Lewis, 1992,p 46).

In today’s business world, many strategic alliances are formed for the wrong reasons. This

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is just taking another along for the ride (Kilburn, 1999). Many strategic alliances although entered into for all the right reasons, do not work. Dissimilar objectives, in ability to share risks and lack of trust lead to an early alliance demise. Many managers enter into an alliance without properly researching the steps necessary to ensure the basic principles of cooperation (Lewis, 1992).

Action taken by subordinates that are not congruent with top level management can prove particularly disruptive, especially in inst

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own and do its own marketing and sell its own product while in alliance with another company it would for sure be grounds for the two to break up and they would most likely

end up in a legal battle (Bruner, 1999). Other problems that can occur between companies in trade alliances are different attitudes among the companies, one company may deliver its good or service behind schedule or do a bad job producing their goods or service which may lead to distrust among the two companies.

Relational risk is concerned with the probability that partner firms lack commitment to the alliance and that their possible opportunistic behaviour could undermine the prospects f an alliance. Such opportunistic behaviours include shirking, appropriating the partner’s

. The sources of performance risk according to a cent study by Das and Teng (1999) include environmental factors, such as government

and development and from production can create serious ifficulties for the protection of intellectual property and the realization of its potential o

resources, distorting information, harbouring hidden agendas and delivering unsatisfactory products and services (Das and Teng, 1999). Because these activities seriously jeopardize the viability of an alliance, relational risk is an important component of the overall risk in strategic alliances.

Performance risk is the probability that an alliance may fail even when partner firms commit themselves fully to the alliance

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policy changes, war, and economic recession, market factors, such as fierce competition and demand fluctuations and internal factors such as a lack of competence in critical areas or sheer bad luck.

Strategic alliances might also create a future local or even global competitor. The coupling from research

value (Garnsey and Wilkinson, 1994, p.138). Likewise, a company can insist on contractual clauses that constrain partners from competing against it in certain products or geographic regions (Wild et al., 2000). Other problems in strategic alliances include a breakdown in trust, a change in strategy, the champions moved on, the value did not materialize, the cultures did not mesh and the systems were not integrated (Kalmbach and Roussel, 1999).

Effective global alliances are usually tediously slow in the making but can be among the best mechanisms to implement strategies in global markets. In a highly competitive

nvironment, alliances present a faster and less risky route to globalization. It is

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extremely complex to fashion such linkages, however, especially where many interconnecting systems are involved, forming intricate networks. Many alliances fail or end up in a takeover in which one partner swallows the other. McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm, surveyed 150 companies that had been in alliances and found that 75 percent of them had been taken over by Japanese partners. Problems with shared ownership, the integration of vastly different structures and systems, the distribution of power between the companies involved, and conflicts in their relative locus of decision making and control are but a few of the organizational issues that must be worked out. But recent economic woes in Asia have turned the tables somewhat, with Western companies having to buy out their financially stressed allies in order to survive.

Often, the form of governance chosen for multinational firm alliances greatly influences their success, particularly in technologically intense fields such as pharma

computers and semiconductors. In a study of 153 new alliances, researchers found that

a real sense, an alliance becomes new form of competition. In fact, according to researcher David Lei (1997), perhaps the

y sensitive areas, creating mistrust and secrecy which then undermine the urpose of the alliance. The difficulty that they are dealing with is the dual nature of the choice of the means of governance, whether a contractual agreement or a joint venture, depended on a desire to control information about proprietary technology. Thus, joint ventures are often the chosen form for such alliances because they provide greater control and coordination in high-technology industries.

Cross border partnerships in particular often become a race to learn with the faster learner later dominating the alliance and rewriting its terms. In

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single greatest impediment managers’ face when seeking to learn or renew sources of competitive advantage is to realize that cooperation can represent another form of unintended competition, particularly to shape and apply new skills to future products and businesses.

All too often, cross border allies have difficulty in collaborating effectively especially in competitivel

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strategic alliances – the benefits of cooperation versus the dangers of introducing new competition through sharing their knowledge and technological skills about their mutual product or the manufacturing process (Figure 3.7). Managers may fear that they will lose the competitive advantage of the firm’s proprietary technology or the specific skills that their personnel possess. The cumulative learning that a partner attains through the alliance could potentially be applied to other products or even other industries that are

beyond the scope of the alliance and therefore would hold no benefit to the partner holding the original knowledge. As noted by Lei (1997), the Japanese in fact have far out learned their U.S. allies in developing and applying new technologies to other uses.

The enticing benefits of cross-border alliances often mask the many pitfalls. In addition to potential loss of technology and knowledge or skill base, other areas of incompatibility ften arise such as conflicting strategic goals and objectives, cultural clashes and disputes o

over management and control systems. Sometimes it takes a while for such problems to evidence themselves, particularly if insufficient homework has been done in meetings between the two sides to work out the implementation details. The alliance between KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Northwest Airlines linking their hubs in Detroit and Amsterdam for example resulted in a bitter feud among the top officials of both companies over methods of running an airline business – the European way or the American way and over cultural differences between the companies as well as a power struggle at the top over who should call the shots.

Figure 3.7 The dual role of strategic alliances

ATIVE COMPETITIVE