COURSE: Strategic Alliances

I have been offering an MBA elective on “Strategic Alliances” since 2019. The elective course was prepared to fill a gap in our offerings, when we benchmarked our electives against other IIMs. The elective has been receving a very good response from students, and gets over subscribed and the course also receives a good feedback. I prepared the couirse outline based upon alliance related courses offered across the leading global business schools. The recent research article that attributes 11% of a firm’s profitability to its alliance networks (Kumar, P., Liu, X., & Zaheer, A. (2022). How much does the firm’s alliance network matter? Strategic Management Journal, 43(8), 1433-1468.) provides a strong motivation for the course.

The course is a mixture of theory and cases, wherein I expose students to some of the seminal alliance literature and building a deeper understanidng of how relational advantage gets created and appropriated. An intersting set of cases on alliance formation, management and performance are the backbone of the course. The course is attractive as students see it as a logical extension of the thinking on competitive advantage, positioning advantage, first mover advantage, second mover advantage, and corporate advantage, to “relational advantage”.

Introduction:

The course is introduced as a follow up to the core Corporate Startegy course, bringing focus on “corporate advantage” gets created through alliances. For this I use the HBR reading “When to allay and when to aquire?“, which is a core reading in the compulory SM course. Building on the argument of what is the corporate advantage all about and when alliances can be source of competitive advantage, I shift to discussion on “The relational view” by Dyer, Kale, & Singh (1998), to build the idea of “relational advantage”.

I also follow this up with a brief discussion on the process view (Kanther, 1994), dialectic view and evolutionary view on alliances.

Among the many ways to things about alliances, the 4 Cs framework is one attractive way. The 4 Cs are Complementarity, Convergence, Commitment and Compatibility. Not sure from where it comes.

Xerox and Fuji Xerox

Renault – Nissan

Xtech in China

Alliance Motivation

There exists a number of cases that build the alliance motivation idea. I use these cases to argue different aspects of alliance motivation — market access, technology access, learning, innovation/creativity, etc. I have identified a number of cases that develop these ideas in alliances.

Hero Honda

Nummi – GM and Toyota

Cirque-de-Soleil

Tata-Starbucks

Proctor and Gamble — Connect and develop

Jio and Facebook

Moser-Baer and OMT

Alliance Formation

Tata and Volkswagen

Tata and Fiat Automobile alliance

Alliance Management

HP-CISCO

Infosys

Eli-Lily

Ecosystems and platforms

Xiomi

Corning (1992)

KLM Alliances

Testin

Star Alliance

Alliance performance and termination

Amazon and Future Group

Forbes Marshall

UTV and Disney