Alliances, Portfolios, Networks – Strategic Management of Relationships

Abstract

Purpose: the management of interfirm relationships is increasingly being seen as one of the major challanges that managers and researchers are facing. The meanings of terms as cooperation, alliances, constelations, networks, portfolios, and interorganizational relationships are not clear in the literature. The main purpose of this paper is to explain the differences between major definitions related to interfirm cooperation. This article addresses the above issues by providing an overview of current research, and results of quantitative study.

Methodology: a research consist of three major components: analysis of existing studies, practical seminars, as well as own quantitative analysis, covering group of leading global ICT firms and over 10 000 of their alliances.

Results: based on the results, this paper presents different approaches to the phenomenon of interfirm relationships as well as provides an overview of emerging approaches and tools for alliance portfolio management.