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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Alliance success : a review of the literature with implications for researchand practice in SMEs

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Masteroppgave i informasjonssystemer- Universitetet i Agder 2010 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..