An Exploratory Study on Alliance Competence and Alliance Portfolio Orientation in Romanian Firms
An Exploratory Study on Alliance Competence and Alliance Portfolio Orientation in Romanian Firms

Summary/Abstract: This paper investigates two important aspects in the context of a firm’s collaborative strategies: (1) the creation and the development of firm’s Alliance Competence and (2) the orientation of firm’s portfolio of strategic alliances, called the Alliance Portfolio Orientation. We have tried to make a step forward toward clarifying these aspects through realizing one empirical investigation in ten Romanian firms headquartered in Nord-West region of Romania. The study is based on qualitative data resulting from interviews with top management executives and analysis of secondary data. We observed that within participating firms there is a medium level of competence to formulate, implement and evaluate collaborative strategies. Regarding the Alliance Portfolio Orientation, the results reveal that from our sample, 60% of the firms collaborate only to obtain short-term/financial gains and 40% of the firms are more long-term oriented and partner also to improve firm’s incremental innovative performance. Moreover, we found that neither firm does not partner to bring to the market new products/services/solutions in the form of radical innovations. Our work is projected to improve the understanding of the strategic alliances/collaborative strategies phenomenon of theorists and practitioners working within the strategic management field.

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