Global Business Alliances: Theory and Practice

(Hardback)

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How alliances forged among businesses in four critical industries contributed dramatically to the success of each business's corporate strategy. Dr. Culpan shows how alliances forged among businesses in four critical industries contributed dramatically to the success of each business's corporate strategy--and lays out the concepts underlying the theory behind how and why their alliance-building strategies worked so well. He develops new conceptual models to explain different strategies, describes the important collaborative processes introduced into the four subject industries, and provides essential knowledge on global partnerships seen from a strategic management viewpoint. Dr. Culpan's book is a major source of information, insights, and ideas on how corporate alliances actually work. It shows the properties common to various forms of multinational cooperation, but it also describes the characteristics unique to the four industries under study: automobile manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, airlines, and telecommunications--industries that reveal to Culpan the differences between specific component companies, and thus the differences among the industries themselves. The result is a thoughtful analysis for teachers and students alike, and for practitioners ever in search of new insights into the pragmatics of corporate strategic alliances and the benefits to be gained from them. Dr. Culpan reviews the current theories and conceptual models that explain global strategic alliances, then devlops new conceptual model frameworks in which alliances can be well understood. He considers collaborative ventures, such as a strategic business option to enhance comparative advantage of the firm against other firms doing other collaborations. From there he examines the different forms of alliances--equity alliances, such as joint ventures and equity participation alliances, and non-equity alliances both. The book closes with a description of the decision-making process, as it applies to the formation and management of cooperative ventures, and then the managerial issues and challenges that are inevitable in the formation and management of strategic alliances.

Reviews

An expert in the field of international business, Culpan (Pennsylvania State Univ.) explains in this clearly written book the theoretical background of strategic alliances, including transaction cost theory, the resource-based view, the industrial organization model, game theory, and organizational learning. He describes the various types of alliances, including joint venture equity alliances and nonequity alliances such as licensing, franchising, management contracts, turnkey operations, subcontracting, supplier partnerships, marketing agreements, technical partnerships, and joint production. The book is unique in presenting separate chapters on global strategic alliances in four specific industries: automobile manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, airlines, and telecommunications. Culpan emphasizes the strategic importance of alliances for multinational companies. He describes how to manage alliances successfully, including how to evaluate the need for an alliance, selecting a partner, what to consider when choosing an equity or nonequity alliance, and how managers should control and evaluate the performance of an alliance. Diagrams and tables of data explain the concepts; extensive chapter endnotes. Appropriate for managers, consultants, researchers, and professors and students of international business, lower-division undergraduate and up. * Choice *
[a]n authoritative work on global business alliances.In summary, the book will appeal to both students and practitioners of strategic business alliances. Researchers interested in the global business alliances will find that this book provides rich treatment of theoretical/conceptual foundations and interlocking variable effecting successful inter-firm partnerships leading to competitive advantage. Academic researchers can create many well-thought-out hypotheses from this book for empirical testing. Also managers who would like to learn the dynamics of inter-firm collaboration will benefit immensely from the industry examples provided and managerial guidelines offered. Well-written, conceptualized, and extensively documented, ^I Global Business Alliance: Theory and Practice^R will be considerable interest to students of inter-firm collaboration as well as to corporate business executives who want to apply the lessons learned from such partnerships in the four industries studied in this book. * Journal of Euro-Marketing *
Culpan's discussions of research joint ventures and other forms of technological diffusion should be of particular interest * Journal of Technology Transfer *

Author Bio

REFIK CULPAN is Professor of Management and International Business in the School of Business Administration, Pennsylvania State University. He holds a doctorate degree from New York University and has had extensive experience, not only in the academic community but as a consultant to various businesses. Dr. Culpan is a regular contributor to the journals of his fields, and coeditor of a previous book for Quorum, Transformation Management in Postcommunist Countries (1995, with Brij Nino Kumar.)