پیوند بین اتحاد استراتژیکی و استراتژی کسب وکار شرکت: مورد صنعت نیمه هادی

We have investigated the linkage between a firm’s business strategy and its selection of alliance activities. Referring to two economic theories, resource-based theory and social exchange theory, we propose an analytical framework of alliance activities with attention to two factors: “resources to be exchanged” and “partners to exchange such resources”. The alliance matrix is proposed as a tool to analyze strategic alliances, as it depicts the two factors defined above on the two-dimensional axes of the matrix. A firm’s business strategy is categorized according to its growth strategy and propositions are defined to explain how firms undertake strategic alliances for the purpose of executing such business strategies. These propositions have been tested using the empirical data from the semiconductor industry. Our results indicate that firms are trying to utilize strategic alliances in order to execute specific business strategies.

This paper investigates the linkage between strategic alliances undertaken by firms and the characteristics of their business strategy. Strategic alliances have become central to competitive success in the fast changing global markets (Doz and Hamel, 1998). With tens of thousands of alliances reported worldwide in recent years, they are clearly one of the most important organizational forms to emerge in the past decade (Anand and Khanna, 2000). The dramatic increase of strategic alliance has been attributed to the strategic responses firms have made to various environmental changes, including accelerating technological innovation, increasing capital requirements, globalization of markets and the importance of customer relationships. Strategic alliances appear to have become indispensable measures for firms to carry out business strategy and may even determine a firm’s potential for future growth. In analyzing alliance activities, it is important to take a view that focuses on the linkage between the alliance and the business strategies of the firms involved, as such strategies are distinctly reflected in alliance activities. The many papers investigating strategic alliances published during the past several years have categorized research in this area into several streams such as: • Formation of strategic alliances, which includes motivation, identification of inducing factors, and modeling of formation process (Das and Teng, 1998, Mahoney, 2001 and Ahuja, 2001). • Structure of strategic alliances, which includes comparisons of governance structures in equity-based and contract-based alliances, analysis of environmental effects of its preferable structure, and the correlation between structure and technology phases in alliance life cycles (Das and Teng, 2001, Roberts and Lu, 2001 and Chen, 2003). • Alliance management, which includes its learning effect, the role of alliance managers, and implication for effective alliance management (Spekman et al., 1996, Kumar and Andersen, 2000 and Anand and Khanna, 2000). • Factors contributing to the success of alliances, which include analyzing successful alliance, developing guidelines for success, and examining reasons for failure (Bleeke and Ernst, 1993, Douma et al., 2000, Hoffmann and Schlosser, 2001 and Chen and Chen, 2002a). • Performance of strategic alliances, which includes valuation using share price response, the process of performance evaluation, and analysis of the determinants of alliance performance (Gersonys, 1996, Chan et al., 1997, Cravens et al., 2000 and Gulati et al., 2000). • Learning dynamism in strategic alliances, which includes inter-firm knowledge transfer, learning procedures, and knowledge protection in alliances (Mowery et al., 1996, Khanna et al., 1998 and Norman, 2002). In addition, there are studies on various aspects of strategic alliances, including motivation, formation, structure, performance, and management in a comprehensive manner. In analyzing such aspects, they apply certain theoretical frameworks, such as resource-based theory and social network theory (Gulati, 1998, Das and Teng, 2000 and Ireland et al., 2002). Although various aspects of strategic alliances have been studied in depth, as we have seen, the research approaches on strategic alliances in terms of linkage to a firm’s business strategy are limited. Analysis of strategic alliances from this viewpoint is desirable, considering the increasing importance of utilizing other firm’s resources in the current business environment. This paper attempts to study strategic alliances from this aspect, and proposes an analytical framework appropriate for that purpose. It also defines several propositions regarding the linkage between alliance activities and the firm’s business strategy, categorizing such alliance activities on the basis of the proposed analytical framework. The propositions defined here have been tested by empirical research in the semiconductor industry. Including this introduction, this paper has six sections. The second section proposes the analytical framework utilized in this study. Certain related theories are referred to, such as resource-based theory and social exchange theory. The third section provides propositions that are defined in accordance with the proposed analytical framework. The fourth section describes the research method to test the propositions. The fifth section discusses the research results and managerial implications of this study. The paper ends with some general conclusions and suggestions for future research.

In this paper, we have investigated the linkage between a firm’s business strategy and its selection of alliance activities. Referring to two economic theories, resource-based theory and social exchange theory, we propose an analytical framework of alliance activities with attention to two factors: “resources to be exchanged” and “partners to exchange such resources”. The alliance matrix is proposed as a tool to analyze strategic alliances, as it depicts the two factors defined above on the two-dimensional axes of the matrix. A firm’s business strategy is categorized according to its growth strategy, as shown in Ansoff’s product-market expansion model, and propositions are defined to explain how firms undertake strategic alliances for the purpose of executing such business strategy. The alliance matrix is the basis of these propositions, in which alliance activities positioned in each of its zones are understood to embody each corresponding category of the firm’s growth strategy. These propositions have been tested using the empirical data from the semiconductor industry. Our results show that our propositions except for one (Proposition 3) are strongly supported, which indicates that the firms are trying to utilize strategic alliances in order to execute specific business strategies. Our findings of the linkage between firm’s business strategy and its selection of alliance activities provide a new aspect of analysis for strategic alliances, and are also useful for a firm’s planning of alliance activities as a measure of achieving their business objectives. An additional interesting finding in our study is that there is one strong negative correlation between certain categories of business strategy and alliance activities (product development strategy and the third zone of alliance matrix). This suggests that certain “undesirable” characteristics of alliance activities have an adverse impact on the execution of specific business strategy. Although we need further evaluation of this linkage, this would also have important implications for avoiding negative elements in alliance activities. One missing factor in our study is the role of equity ownership in alliance activities. There are several studies that focus on the analysis of equity-based alliances vs. contract-based alliances. Narula and Hagedoorn (1999) discuss the growing use of non-equity alliances, which appear to be a superior means of undertaking technological developments in high technology and fast evolving sectors. On the other hand, firms in international alliances have tended to prefer equity agreements, because it is much harder to secure legal resources without equity ownership. They argue that a firm’s choice of equity vs. non-equity alliances is related to its strategic reasoning on alliances. Selection of equity vs. non-equity alliances is also discussed in relation to the complexity of environmental elements and various characteristics of partners (Chen, 2003), as well as the risk factors in a prospective alliance (Das and Teng, 2001). In this way, “equity or non-equity” provides another key factor for characterizing the strategic reasoning behind alliances. This factor will be incorporated in a future study to investigate the linkage between a firm’s business strategy and its selection of alliance activities. Our proposed analytical tool of the alliance matrix will also be improved to incorporate this factor, in order to support investigation of such future themes.