The Organizational Design of the Alliance Management System: A Holistic Perspective

Authors

Univ.-Prof. Dr. W. H. Hoffmann, Dr. T. Knoll, Vienna University of Economics and Business;
Dr. R. Wörner, Contrast Ernst & Young Management Consulting GmbH, Vienna

Year

2020

Print Info

Fortschritt-Berichte VDI, Reihe 12, Nr. 813

Summary

Throughout recent years, the importance of inter-organizational cooperation has increased dramatically. However, a large number of these strategic alliances fails to live up to the partners’ initial expectations, resulting in substantial scholarly attention aiming at better understanding how firms manage their cooperative relationships. This research has individually looked into aspects such as institutional setups, learning mechanisms, and tools to manage alliances and alliance portfolios. In addition, we know that firms that outperform their peers in managing cooperative relationships are said to possess superior alliance capabilities. Nevertheless, a holistic framework that integrates the findings across these streams and provides executives with a systematic approach to organizing and regulating all alliance-related activities within their firms is still not existing. To close this gap, we develop the concept of the Alliance Management System (AMS), which interrelates alliance-related institutions, processes, and tools within a firm and connects the specific configuration with the four organizational design parameters of centralization, specialization, standardization, and formalization. In a total of eight case studies we then apply the AMS framework as a theoretical lens to analyze the alliance management practices of large European corporations. Most importantly, we show that (1) the organizational design parameters of a firm's AMS are interrelated, (2) firms tend to develop consistent configurations reflecting their respective degree of professionalism in alliance management, and (3) that the design of the AMS is influenced by firm-internal and external contingency factors such as alliance portfolio diversity or industry uncertainty. Our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the institutionalization of alliance management and shed light on antecedents of superior alliance capabilities.