| dc.description.abstract | The original idea of this thesis was to get an overview of the literature on alliance success and
then add experiences SMEs on issues identified in the literature review. Unfortunately the
organization pulled out in the last second making it impossible to add empirical findings from
SMEs. Still, the literature review is important and revealed interesting findings that is ready to
be tested empirically with new empirical data. The literature has analyzed articles from
various researchers with different perspectives within different research streams, but with a
focus on alliance success. It has been reported by several researchers that alliance success is
hard to achieve, and they report high numbers of alliance failure. When an alliance fail the
implications for the organizations involved are higher costs, lost time and income, and
sometimes even their competitive ability.
As a result, research on alliance success is a very important field. In this literature review we
found many factors that seem to increase the success rate in alliances. The main enabling
factors for success were choosing the right alliance government and control mechanism, and
alliance formation particularly when firms depend on alliance partners with specific resources
or characteristics. With a good partner and achieving complementary resources the chances of
success increase. Trust was also found to be important for success in alliances, and was also
found to reduce the likelihood of problems, conflicts and risks in alliances, thus further
contributing to success. By being aware of and focusing attention on these factors identified
as positive towards alliance success, a company should increase their success rate. As a result
the literature review has an important contribution to practice. The literature review also
suggests directions for future research on various topics within the area of alliance success.
Keywords: co-operation, collaboration, alliance, partnership, alliance success.. | en_US |
