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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 engage in a comprehensive review of the research on strategic alliances in the last decade.

After presenting a typology of diverse alliance governance forms, reviews recent analyses of alliance formation, implementation management, and performance outcomes of collaborative activities.

Strategic alliances developed and propagated as formalized interorganizational relationships. These cooperative arrangements represent new organizational formation that seeks to achieve organizational objectives better through collaboration than through competition.

The paper provides future research directions on partner selection, networks patterns and processes, understanding the integration in alliances through fusion, fission, and how to manage developmental dynamics.

Concludes with some future directions for theory construction and empirical research.

This study aims to propose that, in business-to-business (B2B) industries, number of strategic alliances firms established before a “black swan” event enhances their chances to survive the black swan, and the enhancements take place through moderation effects. Changes in firms’ core structures – their stated goals, authority structure, core technologies and marketing strategies – to adapt to business jolts have adverse effects on firm performance. Firms’ existing B2B strategic alliances moderate the effects negatively by outsourcing different goals, authority structures, core technologies and marketing strategies to partners who fit the changed environment.

This study collected quantitative data and analyzed the data with the regression method.

Using data from Chinese firms in five technology industries during the 2007–2009 economic crisis, this study finds that firms’ internal adaptation is negatively correlated with their performance during economic crises, and B2B strategic alliances negatively moderate this relationship.

First, this study focuses on B2B strategic alliances, and it is not clear whether the findings apply to B2C industries, where strategic alliances may not be common. Perhaps firms can use other means of survival in addition to strategic alliances in B2C industries. Second, this study does not differentiate between fast-moving and slow-moving industries, and it is not clear whether strategic alliances play the same role in both industries. Third, this study does not differentiate firm ages and sizes. It remains unclear how large, established and small, young firms differ when facing crises. Finally, this study is based on the Chinese setting, and it is not clear whether the findings apply to other markets as well. These issues should be explored in future studies.

Changing firms’ core structures harms their performance during black swan crises because such crises are unpredictable, and planned changes may not adapt firms to crises. Managers should not attempt to change their core structures during crises. B2B strategic alliances provide an effective means for firms to survive crises.

This paper makes two contributions to the existing literature: First, this paper demonstrates that changes of one of the four core structures of a firm to cope with black swan events have negative impacts on firm performance. Second, this paper identifies the importance of holding a variety of strategic alliances previously to the black swan events to reduce the negative impacts of changing core structures.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a linkage between strategic alliance practice and managerial cognitive base with a view to understanding alliance dynamics better.

Brings together two streams of management literature (cognitive base and strategic alliances) in order to provide an alternative to understanding strategic alliances. The analysis found that ever since the work of Hambrick and Mason, Upper echelon (UE) linking managerial characteristics to strategic choice have persistently overlooked strategic alliances as strategic options worth consideration. While on the other hand only a handful of strategic alliance researchers have paid lip‐service to the UE perspective.

After presenting a strategic alliance model, the paper reviews analysis of reasons for alliance formation, choice of partners, alliance structure and scope and alliance performance. Literature on managerial characteristics is also explored with a view to provide an approach to researching strategic alliances.

The paper cannot claim to have evaluated all the literature on the subject. A claim regarding lack of linkages between the two streams of research is made only in the context of accessed publications.

The paper identifies opportunities for further research that links managerial cognitive base with diverse strategic alliance practices. Borrowing from the work of Carpenter et al. the paper further identify possibilities for further research that links top management teams characteristics to strategic alliance research which also has not been researched before.

The paper uses well‐established and researched management fields to identify gaps in the literature which could be further explored. To this end, the paper's originality and value is within identification of these gaps in the management literature.

The purpose of this paper is to portray and analyze the importance of learning and knowledge transfer in strategic alliances created in the context of emerging markets, Russia and Taiwan in particular, and to identify the influence of relational capital factors on the effectives of learning in strategic alliances. Strategic alliances are one of the main tools companies resort to learn, acquire and develop new knowledge and skills.

This research is conducted by case study with four international strategic alliances between Taiwanese and Russian companies.

The results showed that the main driver determining the propensity of the companies located in the emerging markets to establish strategic alliances is learning intent. More specifically, the companies are willing to acquire partner’s managerial, marketing and production knowledge and skills. Relational capital created between partners, and presented through the existence of trust, communication and openness proved to have a determinant influence on the effectiveness and quality of learning process in the strategic alliances, especially in the context of the emerging markets. However, there is an inverted-U relationship between the learning potential of an alliance and the strength of relational involvement of the alliance partners, who utilize the certain means to prevent the negative effects of over-embeddedness.

The major contributions that were made by the study are the following: the authors made an attempt to synthesize different approaches and investigate what are the primary factors affecting strategic alliances formation and operation in the emerging markets context. The authors extended the previous research by reviewing, not only the impact of the relational capital on the process of learning among the partners in the strategic alliances but also by analyzing the forces influencing the strength of these ties. The authors further investigated whether the continuous strengthening of the relational ties is necessary and always beneficial for the companies.

This paper aims to investigate the role of quality management (QM) practices in the success of strategic alliances.

Through a review of the literature, a conceptual model employing a relational view of inter‐organizational competitive advantage is proposed, which attempts to address the concept of quality management in strategic alliances and networks.

Trust and co‐operative learning have emerged as critical factors that affect the success of strategic alliances. The proposed model, while integrating elements of quality management and strategic alliances, determines alliance success and alliance satisfaction as the outcomes of strategic alliances. Several propositions have been developed to address the relationship between different constructs in the model. The effects of trust and co‐operative learning on alliance performance are discussed, and key areas for research are identified.

Companies can achieve a higher level of performance and satisfaction from alliances.

While previous research on quality management has been focused on the implementation of quality management within a firm, by extending the concept of quality management to strategic alliances this paper expands quality management implementation beyond the traditional view of quality.

An extensive, integrated review of literature precedes a new typology of alliances based on participating firms’ relative position in the supply chain (scale or link) and the nature of their cooperation (equity or non‐equity). This typology helps to distinguish among a bewildering array of alliances and to explicate alliance motivations and performance on impact of e‐business technological innovations. Theoretical and managerial implications follow.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to deliver a new and holistic insight on small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) strategic alliances in terms of the precursor, motivations, selection, governance structure, outcomes and challenges of strategic alliances of SMEs and the relationships between them.

To better understand the entire process of SME strategic alliances, the author takes a novel approach which is based on a combined perspective of entrepreneurship and innovation, resource-based theory, and social network theory.

The author develops a theoretical model which seeks to conceptualize the antecedents, process, and outcomes of strategic alliances of SMEs and the relationships between them.

The conceptual framework provides the directions for future empirical testing and further theoretical research.

This study may help managers better understand the importance of an integrated approach to entrepreneurship and innovation, and the process and outcomes of enhancing their entrepreneurship and innovation capacities through strategic alliances.

To the author's knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that takes a holistic and integrated approach to study SME strategic alliances.

This paper aims to illustrate theoretically and empirically the decision and result of strategic alliance between baitul maal wa tamwil (BMT) and Islamic banks as a relationship based on trust, mutual-trustworthiness and commitment. This paper also identifies the basic criteria for the resilience of a strategic alliance, the challenges and the barriers in a strategic relationship along with managerial and operational implications.

In this study, we have chosen to use the confirmatory approach through a structured questionnaire by means of field survey to 131 BMT spread throughout Central Java and Yogyakarta. From the total sample, 89 BMT fulfilled the sampling criteria, that is: has operated for a minimum of two years and does not experience any financial difficulties during those two years; has done a financing contract with an Islamic bank; channels some of its funds to micro, small and medium enterprises; and is in the form of a cooperative, and not a micro financial institute. Data treatment uses the method of listwise deletion. Data analysis uses equation model with the software LISREL version 8.80. To validate the result of data analysis, we have also run a focus group discussion with Directorate of Syariah Banking, Bank of Indonesia, and in-depth interviews with BMT parent cluster (Inkopsyah).

This research shows that commitment contributes positively in achieving the financial goals of an alliance. Coordination and initial agreement has a positive and significant influence in forming commitment from BMT and trust from Islamic banks. Other than coordination and initial agreement, the trust given by Islamic banks also came from the social capital owned by BMT.

The trust and commitment will assist the building of strategic alliance between Islamic banks and BMT. Apart from financial purposes, the alliance between the two will also encourage natural knowledge-sharing.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of strategic alliances (knowledge/learning, efficiency and market motives) on the development of human capital.

To do so, a quantitative study was chosen, with data on technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Portugal, leading to 257 valid answers.

The results obtained from a structural equation model show that motives for strategic alliances (knowledge/learning, efficiency and market) have a strong influence on the human capital of the SMEs analysed.

These outcomes reveal that strategic alliances are a way for SMEs to overcome resource constraints in terms of human capital, representing an important implication for business practice. As strategic alliances influence human capital, the relations SMEs establish with other firms are increasingly important for their sustainability and development. Acting in isolation in the market can reduce this type of firm’s chances of survival.

Despite some studies relating the formation of strategic alliances and human capital, there is a gap regarding the relationship between the role of strategic alliances and human capital in the technology-based sector. Therefore, this research represents a contribution and innovation in academic terms in this area.