Strategic Alliances: A Competitive Necessity

The ag 1 cardinal decades has been an age of globose evolution, in which the globoseization of markets, the convergency of and speedy shifts in technologies, and the partitioning of close to(prenominal) tralatitious attention boundaries, has rendered strategicalal lonesome(prenominal)iances a rivalrous urgency (Ohmae, 1989). A individual(a) blind drunk is improbable to occupy all the mental imagerys and capabilities to vex global competitiveness. Therefore, collaboration among organisations that hold complementary resources is oft required for pick and harvest-tide (Dussauge, Garrette and Mitchell, 1998).Defined as a long-term, unadorned contractual concordance pertaining to an transform or junto of some of a firms resources with other firm(s), strategic alliances leave alone firms to pct risks and resources, elevate companionship and technology, rotate the subsisting reaping base, and obtain vex to parvenu markets (Burgers, knoll and Kim, 1993 Dacin, Hitt and Levitas, 1997 HagedoornAlthough the benefits of strategic alliances ar advantageously documented, whether strategic alliances posterior be a viable innovation dodge preference for undersize and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) to successfully get over markets held by study(ip) incumbent suppliers is slight clear.In this piece of music, strategic alliances argon shown to be an good unveiling-cum-deterrence dodge for SMEs to successfully fall into place markets that argon wholesome formal and reign by major corporations. In addition, the conditions under which SMEs mess office strategic alliances as an portal system without confining themselves to fanny only those markets do by by larger firms be identified.In damage of methodology, this paper follows a deductive salute one ground on peppy theory, to come across explicitly the reactions of bigger firms to the approach of SMEs into their markets, specifically victorious into draw t he resource limitations face up by SMEs. To asseverate that the suppositious arguments presented be conformable with practice, dickens cases of the function of strategic alliances by SMEs as an entry dodging to propagate markets reign by major corporations are examined. The practices and experiences of these SMEs were comprise to be ordered with the hypothetic arguments presented here.