Hoofdstuk 9 Strategie Alliances

Question 1

Strategic alliance

Answer 1

Two or more independent organizations cooperate in the development, manufacture, or sale of products and services

Question 2

Nonequity alliance

Answer 2

Cooperating firms agree to work together to develop, manufacture, or sell products or services, but they do not take equity positions in each other or form an independent organizational unit to manage their cooperative efforts. Rather, these cooperative relations are managed through the use of various contracts

Question 3

Equity alliance

Answer 3

Cooperating firms supplement contracts with equity holdings in alliance partners

Question 4

Joint venture

Answer 4

Cooperating firms create a legally independent firm in which they invest and from which they share any profits that are created

Question 5

Value of strategic alliances

Answer 5

• Exploiting economies of scale
• Learning from competitors
• Managing risk and sharing costs
• Creating a competitive environment favorable to superior performance
• Facilitating the development of technology standards
• Facilitating tacit collusion (exchanging signals with other firms about their intent to coordinate their production and pricing decisions to reduce competition)
• Facilitating entry and exit (avoiding the high cots of creating skills, abilities, and products for a new entry)
• Low-cost entry into new industries and new industry segments
• Low-cost exit from industries and industry segments (partner will buy assets for valuable)
• Managing uncertainty (maintain a point of entry into a market or industry, without incurring the costs associated with full-scale entry
• Low-cost entry into new markets

Question 6

Alliance threats

Answer 6

Incentives to cheat on strategic alliances

• Adverse selection (potential partners misrepresent the value of the skills and abilities they bring to the alliance)
• Moral hazard (partners provide to the alliance skills and abilities of lower quality than they promised)
• Holdup (partners exploit the transaction-specific investments made by others in the alliance)

Question 7

Rarity of strategic alliances

Answer 7

Whether the benefits that firms obtain from their alliances are common across firms competing in an industry

Question 8

Imitability of strategic alliances

Answer 8

• Direct duplication (hard to duplicate socially complex relations)
• Substitutes (going it alone when moderate level of transaction-specific investment, an exchange partner possesses VBI resources and capabilities, and uncertainty about future value of exchange; or acquisitions when legal constraints, limited flexibility under high uncertainty, organizational ‘baggage’ in acquired firm, and the value of a firm depends on its independence)

Question 9

Organizing strategic alliances

Answer 9

• Explicit contracts and legal sanctions
• Equity investments
• Firm reputations
• Joint ventures (both partners will be hurt)
• Trust