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The purpose of this paper is to apply a fuzzy LinPreRa cognitive map to evaluate the interaction and importance of factors affecting the development of strategic alliance partnerships between the outlying island duty-free shops and existing collaboration firms in duty-free shops. Meanwhile, the key factors should be considered in establishing strategic alliance partnerships while analyzing and comparing the perspectives of owners for outlying island duty-free shop and partner vendors of collaborating firms along with differences of influencing key factors on partnership quality.

This study incorporates a fuzzy linguistic preference relation analytical network process (fuzzy LinPreRa ANP) in the fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) method to formulate a fuzzy LinPreRa cognitive map to evaluate the interactions and importance of key factors and the conditions of interactive impacts during the establishment of strategic alliance partnerships. The authors use the outlying island duty-free shops in Taiwan as the empirical subject to illustrate how the fuzzy LinPreRa cognitive map is applied. In-depth, interviews and questionnaire surveys are conducted to collect and evaluate respondents concerning key factors affecting strategic alliance partnerships establishment.

The following three findings based on the results of empirical analysis: first, the administrative behavioral patterns of managers for strategic alliance partnerships encompass shared values and goal coherence, while the associative statements are located on the first layer of fuzzy LinPreRa cognitive map core associations, which illustrates that businesses attach great importance to conceptual ideas. Second, integrity and reputations of both parties are the governing mechanism of strategic alliance partnerships, influencing mutual reputation. Third, the relationship of strategic alliance partnerships refers to the profit opportunities of both parties and their ability to respond to the market, including future development, regional indicators, marketing capabilities, brand multiplicity and customer retention. However, it can be inferred that such associative factors are located in the outer layer or belong to noncore associations, which means that both parties’ abilities to respond to market reactions are weakened.

This study provides valuable relationship managerial strategies to maintain long-term partnerships for outlying island duty-free shops and their alliance collaborating firms including strengthened relationships of both parties’ managers to achieve common values and consistent objectives; improved beneficial value of both parties in strategic alliance partnerships; continued close communications to enhance the quality of strategic alliance partnerships; and establishment of personnel training mechanisms and strict formulation of management rules for strategic alliance partnerships.

The main valuable contributions are included the fuzzy LinPreRa cognitive map by combining two different decision methods including FCM and fuzzy LinPreRa ANP is proposed to help decision makers to improve the evaluation quality and calculation efficiency for critical elements’ interaction and importance; the fuzzy LinPreRa cognitive map can clarify considering significant factors when maintaining strategic alliance partnerships and further provide valuable relationship managerial strategies to maintain long-term relationships for duty-free shop owners and their alliance collaborating firms.

This conceptual paper examines the need for viable theoretical models of international learning alliances in the light of cooperative games and complexity in two distinguished educational settings. Game theory is used to demonstrate the need for the top managerial executives to acquire a detailed understanding of decision makers' behaviours and trigger the deployment of complex analytical methods. The paper scrutinizes Russia's pursued aggressive approach using shock therapy, also suggest the critical need to reform policy.

Combining the critical analysis of (1) cooperative games and (2) adaptive systems structures, a dependable model is derived, which sets the baseline for determining the role of costs and gains. The analysis is supported using a real-world example of an alliance between British University (the X and Y alliance) and Russian University. It also emphasizes the importance of both internal and external pressure variables closely connected with the cooperative games, adaptive system and shock therapy.

Two features of alliances have been emphasized. The first is the importance of informal relationships in the evolution of partnerships and of cooperation. This is a well-known factor in the success of any relationship. Especially in international partnerships, empathy at the individual level is perhaps necessary to bypass the influence of historical and cultural differences that are barriers at the macro level, preconditions rather than consequences of successful policies and contractual arrangements at the level of organizations and governments. The second feature is interdependence at the cost–benefit level and in the domain of decisions. The cooperation of both partners is required to realize payoffs.

The implication of this paper is a guideline for regulators and policymakers designing worldwide alliances in higher education. In addition, this paper covers an interesting domain that could be of interest to organizations involved in forming strategic alliances, developing and re-engineering policies for strategic coalitions and setting future profitable payoff relationships within the contextual limitations of X and Y.

This paper creates new knowledge by concisely examining the meaning of strategic alliances in the context of the global education industry.

Changes in societal preferences can have a significant impact on the business strategy of companies. This paper aims to illustrate the utility of strategic alliances in channelizing societal preferences.

LEGO and its many strategic alliances are carefully examined to illustrate the need for considering strategic alliances from a societal preference perspective. LEGO’s strategic alliances are juxtaposed with two major societal trends of the past few decades, environmental movement and multiple efforts toward greater inclusivity.

The following important lessons are elaborated for helping business organizations pursuing strategic alliances: long-term orientation should not become an excuse for complacency, need for alignment of organizations within the strategic alliance, strategic alliances should be viewed as a bidirectional channel for influence and attending to internal transformations is crucial for success.

This paper deviates from the traditional treatment of strategic alliances as a business arrangement that only drives financial performance but instead provides insights into how strategic alliances can be connected to changing societal preferences. It also challenges the received wisdom in the academic literature on strategic alliance, which is dominated by some very restrictive theoretical perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on evaluating relational capability regarding the configuration of a network of technological partners in Brazilian technology-based firms (TBFs).

The data were collected using an online questionnaire made available to technology-based companies resident in Brazilian Technological Parks. A total of 73 companies responded. The data were analyzed using bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques and were processed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences software. The statistical tests included factor analysis, Cronbach’s α and multiple regression.

The paper shows that the strategic alliance portfolio is influenced by organizational learning, diversity of partners, governance structure, intensity of partnership relations and configuration. In particular, the portfolio of alliances with competence orientation is characterized by tacit knowledge exchanges and learning exploration, homogeneity of partners, informal governance mechanisms, strong bonds of trust and reciprocity with partners and low diversification of actors’ profiles, their attributions and the results obtained in the portfolio. Meanwhile, the characteristics of alliance portfolios with legitimacy orientation include explicit knowledge exchange and learning exploitation, heterogeneity of partners, formal governance mechanisms, weak bonds of trust and reciprocity with partners and high diversification of the profile of the actors, their attributions and the results obtained from the portfolio.

The configuration of the alliance portfolio plays an important role in innovation. To stimulate the creation of new technological skills, the executive of a technology-based company from emerging countries such as China, Russia and India, can configure the portfolio of strategic alliances with more homogeneous partners in terms of profile and attribution. However, if this executive is challenged to seek legitimacy and complementary resources in these markets he can invest in the diversification of the strategic alliance portfolio, prioritizing partners with differentiated profiles and attributions.

The originality of the research lies in the adoption of a complementary and multidimensional theoretical prism, considering the relational capacity of TBFs in the configuration of alliances, both in the intra-firm and portfolio perspective. Furthermore, it was considered that the configuration of alliances can be based on both competence and legitimacy factors.

Many partnerships end badly. It doesn't have to be that way.

The notion of effective strategic alliances provides the basis on which this paper proposes a framework to manage the application and outcomes of management learning. The management of key partner collaboration emerges in this paper as a major success factor in determining effective management learning. A proactive structured approach to partnerships and alliances is proposed as a robust framework for management learning that is based on the advantages and effectiveness of management theories and concepts.

This paper describes the results of a longitudinal research study of an inter‐organisational partnership; this paper explores the contributions, experiences and perceptions of the central stakeholders in management learning (HE, organisations and students). Through a case study approach to three collaborative projects, an analysis of the learning cycle of planning, designing, monitoring and assessing programmes is presented.

The results demonstrate that, as well as being a diagnostic tool, the framework underpinning strategic alliances – their formation, risks and challenges – provides the basis of an anticipatory and proactive approach to successful management‐learning partnerships. The research shows that, if stakeholders in the management‐learning relationship are to achieve their individual and diverse objectives, managing their interaction with each other and input into the process is essential. The need for partners to be explicit about their collaboration and each stakeholder's objectives is demonstrated. The learning agreement is a mechanism through which these desired outcomes could be made tangible and thus through which the strategic partnership can be managed.

The distinct contribution of this paper is that it brings together different management concepts to make practical use of the ideas of management learning. It provides evidence of successful programme design and delivery for management learning, as well as issues that have not worked well in the development of successful alliances, which underpin these programmes. Finally, the paper contributes to the continuing progression of thinking about the very nature of management learning as a theoretical framework to enhance the link between research, learning and the practice of management.

The advent of the Internet and electronic communications has enabled companies to be more responsive to their customers. However, the same technological advancements are changing the marketplace and providing an impetus for changes in strategic alliance and partnership structures. Successful leaders of the future will have to understand how to operate in the new marketplace and within the evolving organizational structures where alliances and partnerships are changing. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the current and future organizational structures in the logistics industry. Toward that end, traditional supply chain management (SCM), electronic supply chain management (eSCM), and the resulting impact on strategic alliances and partnerships will be explored. Additionally, considering the inherent ability of the eSC to be dynamic and adaptable, the new type of leader that is likely to be most successful in this new structure is discussed.

This paper attempts to propose an integrated model for measuring the knowledge transfer effectiveness in university‐industry alliances. The so‐called “RDCE” model is thereby proposed as an integrated model for measuring the knowledge transfer effectiveness. By combining inter‐organizational relations (IORs), knowledge‐based view (KBV) and resource‐based view (RBV) of firms, this paper aims to focus on the influence of determinant factors such as partner complementarities, partner attributes, the characteristics of the coordination and relationship quality between industrial companies and universities that may lead to the effectiveness of knowledge transfer.

This framework thereby clarifies how mediating variables influenced the paths that constitute the direct, indirect and total effects of mediated models by integrating moderated regression analysis together with bootstrap resampling methods to ensure the precision in estimating confidence intervals of indirect effects and path analysis using structural equation models to test all the hypotheses simultaneously for the robustness of the results and conclusions.

The statistical results reveal that the proposed model has a significant mediating effect that contributes to knowledge transfer effectiveness. Only partner attributes and relationship factors have a direct impact on the effectiveness of knowledge transfer. This appears plausible since mere complementarities and coordination between partners may not lead to learning or knowledge transfer, which requires a certain depth of the partner interaction in terms of the specific attributes of partners, coordination and relationship quality.

The authors assumed that the alliance constitutes partnerships between firms of roughly equal size and market power. Therefore, this study provided only broad perspectives of collaboration among alliance partners, and did not capitalize on different degree of alliance integration and different types of collaboration.

Managerial suggestions on how to improve their knowledge transfer effectiveness are also provided at the end of the text.

There are numerous studies examining alliance network performance. Very few studies, however, have examined detailed collaborative activities in dyadic university‐industry partnerships and potential constructs for measuring knowledge transfer and commercialization in the research and development alliance between industrial firms and university context.

Research on strategic alliances is concerned with two issues: continuation and reconfiguration. Building on prior research that examines the two issues separately, the paper studies them simultaneously. This paper aims to investigate how strategic alliances may exert the synergetic effect between dynamics and stability as well as to discuss the dynamic evolution process and influence factors of strategic alliances.

This paper describes the construction of a two-party evolutionary game model of alliance and partners. The model is used to analyze the evolution process of synergetic mechanism to determine when to terminate and when to continue with a partnership. Further, numerical simulation is used to quantify the results and to gain insight into the effects of various factors on the dynamic evolution of the synergetic mechanism.

This paper reveals several synergetic states of dynamics and stability in the alliances. The results show that synergy states are positively affected by the collaborative innovation benefits, alliance management capability, the intensity of intellectual property protection, liquidated damages and reputation losses, and negatively affected by the absorptive capacity of partners.

The study helps the alliance to achieve long-term development as well as to balance the paradoxical relationship. The results suggest that managers of strategic alliances should focus on building strong and long-term relationships in order to achieve high performance innovations. Managers should also pay close attention to their partners’ behaviors in previous alliances.

This paper provides new insights into the paradoxical relationship in alliance by revealing the evolution of synergetic mechanism between dynamics and stability. The results remind alliances to understand the relationship between dynamics and stability and to notice the influence factors of synergistic effects when they are making decisions.