Alliance Partners Research Articles

Sunfuel Electric: charting a differentiated go-to-market-strategy in the EV charging space

Learning outcomes After completion of the case study, students will be able to understand the service offerings within the nascent electric vehicle (EV) sector and end-consumer needs of EV charging services, understand the reasoning behind Sunfuel Electrics (SFEs) prioritisation of destination charging for their first go-to-market (GTM) strategy and appreciate SFE’s use of community marketing and alliance partners to execute its various strategies. Connect game-theory with the proposed strategies. Case overview/synopsis SFE was an early start-up in EV charging space. The co-founders believed that any success would hinge on their ability to play a differentiated game and carve a distinct yet profitable niche in the EV charging arena. SFE deliberately focussed on “destination charging” and identified a segment that they were confident of making a difference: the discerning high-end consumer. Soon, SFE’s success caught the eye of its deep-pocketed competitors who also entered the same space. As a single service company, the co-founders set in motion a back-up plan and identified three new strategic thrust areas to maintain SFE’s competitive edge. The first involved entering the city charging segment, and the second was a pioneering concept branded “E-Trails” targeted at a community of EV owners who were motor enthusiasts. Thirdly, SFE conceptualised an EV-Roadhouse concept, promising a full-bouquet of select premium services at a pit-stops along the highway. The co-founders needed to test which and to what extent would these initiatives would translate into real gains and if returns were commensurate with investments and SFE’s ability to deliver a scalable consistent experience. Specifically, if these proposed asset-light avenues added the required heft to their GTM strategy. Complexity academic level This case study is suitable for post-graduate students in marketing, strategy, entrepreneurship and sustainability courses. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 8: Marketing.

Building research capacity and capability to enhance the quality of living and dying addressing advancing frailty through integrated care: the ALLIANCE partnership.

Frailty affects around 10% of people aged over 65 years, increasing to 65% of those over 90 years. This number is increasing. Older people with frailty are projected to become the largest future users of care services as they near end of life. Living with frailty increases vulnerability to sudden deterioration, fluctuating capacity and mortality risk. This leads to complex needs, requiring integrated care, and an approach orientated towards living with, as well as dying from, advancing frailty. However, accessing care in a timely manner can be difficult. To develop a sustainable, cross-sectoral partnership to: identify priorities to improve integrated care delivery, and care transitions, for older people with advancing frailty develop organisations in which to conduct research submit study proposal(s) for funding. To establish Partnership infrastructure and identify key contacts across palliative and end-of-life care. To understand the strengths, weaknesses, barriers and enablers of research readiness and clinical services for people with advancing frailty. To support provider services to become research ready. To establish Partnership-wide research questions and develop research proposals. The Partnership brought together experts, by profession or experience (n = 244), across specialist palliative and geriatric care and local government, to improve the delivery of integrated care for older people with advancing frailty as they near end of life. Members included older people with frailty, unpaid carers, health, social and voluntary care professionals and academics, across the East Midlands, South East England and South West London. A survey of key contacts (n = 76) mapped and scoped the Partnership's strengths, weaknesses, barriers and enablers of services for people with advancing frailty, and service providers' research readiness. Forty-six key contacts responded. Most worked in the East Midlands (59%), in health care (70%) and in the community (58%). Survey findings were used to develop a service framework and to create a short list of potential research questions. Questions were refined and prioritised through coproduction with frail older people (n = 21), unpaid carer representatives (n = 7), health, social and voluntary care professionals (n = 11) and care home representatives (n = 3). The question chosen for bid development focused on ensuring what matters most to older people with frailty informs service development. This bid is currently being written. Partnership members were also supported to develop research readiness and enhance meaningful patient and public involvement by the development and curation of multiple resources. This work was challenging. The Partnership enabled the collaboration of diverse stakeholders and fostered opportunities to improve end-of-life care for older people with advancing frailty. However, the fluidity of the workforce, lack of finance to buy-out key contacts' time, limited service integration across sectors, lack of common language and concepts across sectors, need to build research understanding and readiness, and minimal evidence of engaging frail older people approaching end of life in determining service provision and research, made achieving the initial goals overly ambitious. Nevertheless, the Partnership developed a service framework for older people living and dying with advancing frailty, and is currently coproducing a clinically applied, translational research proposal. This article presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Public Health Research programme as award number NIHR135262.

Communication range predicts dolphin alliance size in a cooperative mating system

It is well known that communication range, often termed active space,1 varies with habitat structure, and this variation can influence individual vocal behavior across taxa.2,3 While theoretical predictions imply that communication distances can drive the evolution of mammalian alliance sizes,4 empirical tests of this hypothesis are currently lacking. In Shark Bay, Western Australia, unrelated male bottlenose dolphins form multilevel alliances, where males work together in pairs or trios to herd single estrus females.5,6,7,8 Here, we use empirical measures of male dolphin vocalizations, ambient noise levels, and high-resolution bathymetry data to estimate variation in active space across the study site. We combine this with long-term data on male alliance behavior to determine how active space influences alliance group size and mating success. We show that the active space of vocalizations used by allied males in a reproductive context predicts the number of preferred alliance partners with whom individuals cooperate over the longer term, ultimately contributing significantly to male access to mating opportunities. These results reveal that variation in sensory ecology driven by heterogeneous habitat influences optimal cooperative group size and mating success within a single population of wild animals.

Human Rights Promotion and Democratic Allies

Abstracts Do military alliances promote human rights? Scholars and practitioners generally believe they do not because states form alliances largely to advance their strategic interests and thus are not interested in members' domestic policies. I claim that some states may care about their allies' human rights practices. Specifically, democracies are concerned that alliance relationships with rights-abusing governments harm their reputation, and thus urge their allies to improve human rights. However, this rights-promoting motivation is constrained because democracies also need to preserve alliance partnerships with governments that may rely on repression for their internal security. Empirical analyses of alliance relationships between democracies and autocracies provide support for this argument. Autocracies with a powerful democratic ally implement relatively advanced human rights protection; however, this association becomes weaker as the risk of domestic conflict becomes higher. These findings suggest the importance of considering democratic allies in the international promotion of human rights.

China and the Australia-New Zealand alliance: the importance of loyal opposition

ABSTRACT The Australia-New Zealand alliance is a critical element of New Zealand foreign and defence policy. It is especially important in a region that is becoming less stable and more competitive. This commentary asks how the alliance influences New Zealand’s China policy. Australia and New Zealand both enjoy significant trade relations with China, and both have sought to manage relations to maximise economic opportunities. Following decades of economic growth, China has led a regionwide increase in defence spending, becoming a more powerful, consequential and at times disruptive regional actor. This shift has complicated China policy in both countries and further underlined the importance of the alliance partnership for New Zealand. Both countries have recalibrated their China policies and strengthened the cohesion of the alliance. This is shown by shared assessments of opportunity and risk, of synchronised shifts due to changes in China and joint actions to shape China’s behaviour and the regional order. Temporal differences in policy shifts, notably in security settings and public diplomacy, follow a tradition of loyal opposition that ultimately strengthens the alliance response to a rejuvenated China.

Kindred spirits: Cognitive frame similarity and good faith provisions in strategic alliance contracts

AbstractResearch SummaryAn intriguing yet underexamined phenomenon in strategic alliance contracts is the use of good faith provisions. These provisions appeal to parties' integrity and fair dealing but are often ambiguous, and their enforcement in court is unpredictable. Adopting a sociocognitive perspective, we predict a positive relationship between the similarity of partners' organizational‐level cognitive frames and the number of good faith provisions in alliance contracts. We further posit that technological uncertainty strengthens this relationship, whereas each alliance partner's cumulative contracting experience weakens it. We also expect a more positive relationship in instances of “genuine” good faith, which serves as a substitute for an explicit clause, compared with “guarded” good faith, which supplements an explicit clause. Our analysis of 1225 strategic alliance contracts from the biopharmaceutical industry supports our arguments.Managerial SummaryManagers negotiating strategic alliances often face a dilemma: they negotiate detailed contracts to reduce legal risk but limit flexibility or opt for less codification, saving time and retaining flexibility but increasing legal risk. Good faith provisions offer a potential solution because they are flexible yet legally enforceable, but they require a shared interpretation of the relevant contingency, raising questions about when managers find this approach reasonable. We analyzed 1225 biopharmaceutical alliance contracts and found that such provisions are more common when alliance partners have similar cognitive frames, as evidenced by similar “About Us” web pages. This effect is stronger under conditions of greater technological uncertainty but weakens with more alliance experience. Our study elucidates the use of good faith provisions to aid managers in navigating alliance negotiations efficiently.

A Standardized Pipeline for Assembly and Annotation of African Swine Fever Virus Genome.

Obtaining a complete good-quality sequence and annotation for the long double-stranded DNA genome of the African swine fever virus (ASFV) from next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology has proven difficult, despite the increasing availability of reference genome sequences and the increasing affordability of NGS. A gap analysis conducted by the global African swine fever research alliance (GARA) partners identified that a standardized, automatic pipeline for NGS analysis was urgently needed, particularly for new outbreak strains. Whilst there are several diagnostic and research labs worldwide that collect isolates of the ASFV from outbreaks, many do not have the capability to analyze, annotate, and format NGS data from outbreaks for submission to NCBI, and some publicly available ASFV genomes have missing or incorrect annotations. We developed an automated, standardized pipeline for the analysis of NGS reads that directly provides users with assemblies and annotations formatted for their submission to NCBI. This pipeline is freely available on GitHub and has been tested through the GARA partners by examining two previously sequenced ASFV genomes; this study also aimed to assess the accuracy and limitations of two strategies present within the pipeline: reference-based (Illumina reads) and de novo assembly (Illumina and Nanopore reads) strategies.

Strategic Alliances and Lending Relationships

ABSTRACT We study how proprietary information flows in strategic alliances facilitate banks’ information collection in private debt markets. We argue that lenders that have previously worked with a borrower’s alliance partners have an information advantage and show that firms entering a strategic alliance receive a lower interest spread on loans from banks that have previously lent to their strategic partners than loans from other banks. Cross-sectional tests on alliances’ economic importance and participants’ information environment support our hypothesis that the loan price effect is driven by reduced information asymmetry between borrowers and their partners’ relationship banks. Last, we find borrowers are more likely to obtain debt financing from alliance-related banks than from other banks. Overall, our findings are consistent with lenders that have previously worked with an alliance counterparty possessing debt contracting-relevant information about the soft nature of alliance value and the partners’ commitment to alliances. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: G10; G21; G32.

An intuitionistic fuzzy graph’s variation coefficient measure with application to selecting a reliable alliance partner

Group decision-making (GDM) is crucial in various components of graph theory, management science, and operations research. In particular, in an intuitionistic fuzzy group decision-making problem, the experts communicate their preferences using intuitionistic fuzzy preference relations (IFPRs). This approach is a way that decision-makers rank or select the most desirable alternatives by gathering criteria-based information to estimate the best alternatives using a wider range of knowledge and experience. This article proposes a new statistical measure in a fuzzy environment when the data is ambiguous or unreliable to solve a decision-making problem. This study uses the variation coefficient measure combined with intuitionistic fuzzy graphs (IFG) and Laplacian energy (LE) to solve a GDM problem that utilizes intuitionistic fuzzy preference relations (IFPRs) to select a reliable alliance partner. Initially, the Laplacian energy determines the weight of individual standards, and the obtained weight average further estimates the overall criterion weight vector. We establish the authority criteria weights using the variation coefficient measure and then ultimately rank the alternatives for each criterion using the same measure. We examine four distinct companies Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Zeta to conduct a realistic GDM to choose which alliance partner would be ideal. We successfully implemented the suggested technique, determining that Alpha satisfies company standards and is ranked first among other companies. Moreover, this technique is useful for all kinds of Intuitionistic fuzzy group decision-making problems to select optimal ones.

Differential Market Value due to the Differential Stakeholder Management between Alliance Partners

Differential Market Value due to the Differential Stakeholder Management between Alliance Partners

Legitimacy and Green Innovation: The Mediating Role of Green Alliance Partners

Legitimacy and Green Innovation: The Mediating Role of Green Alliance Partners

Does the Predator Become the Prey? Knowledge Spillover and Protection in Alliances

Does a firm that successfully absorbs knowledge from an alliance partner learn to protect its own knowledge in subsequent alliances? Our analysis of 529 alliances of East Asian firms during 1999–2015 suggests that as firms more skillfully overcome their partners’ knowledge protection, they learn to better protect their own knowledge in subsequent alliances. However, such vicarious learning increases at a diminishing rate and is further weakened by the firm’s relative absorptive capacity and the value chain scope of the previous alliance. Our study extends research on learning in alliances by demonstrating cross-alliance dynamics and by revealing conditions under which absorbing knowledge from previous partners helps a firm protect its own knowledge in subsequent alliances.

International Project Management – Another Challenge for Librarians. How Well Prepared Are We for This? A Case Study of the TRAIN4EU Project

The European Universities Initiative (EUI) was established in 2017. Its aim is to strengthen strategic partnerships between higher education institutions across the EU by building networks of universities. At the end of 2023, there were already 50 European University Alliances gathering 430 higher education (HE) institutions. In each of these Alliances, academic libraries are members, too. These libraries are already involved in intra-alliance projects, and these alliances will probably happen more often due to the EU’s project-driven approach. This practice paper is, to the authors’ knowledge, the first attempt to describe another challenge that European academic libraries currently face i.e., project management practice. The alliance partner universities operate under distinct national laws and institutional practices, making it challenging to easily align them for effective cross-university collaborations. Familiarity with the theoretical principles of EU project management and project management methodology greatly facilitates the preparation of the proposal and the work of the project. It also allows more effective management of the project as a whole or its individual parts. This paper maps the challenges that work in international projects brings and provides suggestions on how EUI libraries can utilize project management techniques, while also aiming at showing the paths to facilitate cooperation. Drawing from an analysis of the literature on project management that might apply in library-led projects to strengthen communities of purpose, the paper is based on the example of the work experience on the project TRAIN4EU, that was co-led by the academic librarians from the University of Warsaw Library, Poland, and run by 4EU + universities. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations based on TRAIN4EU practices, lessons learned, as well as pitfalls to avoid.

The Rise of India's Second Republic

Abstract: At first glance, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s narrow 2024 general election victory—a win only made possible thanks to the cooperation of alliance partners—suggests a return to a previous era of coalition government in India. While the ruling party may be weakened, the nature of the political order has fundamentally shifted in ways that will have a lasting impact on Indian democracy. India is witnessing the dawn of a "Second Republic," an inflection point that is equal in magnitude to the constitutional moment in 1950, when India's "First Republic" was established. Several elements of the Second Republic were visible prior to these elections, and the BJP's narrow victory has not dislodged them. The nature of electoral democracy, liberal constitutionalism, national identity, secularism, and federalism have all undergone significant transformations. Yet, true to India's nature, its new political settlement cannot be readily captured using simple binary distinctions.

Alliance Partner Choice and CEOs’ Facial Structure

Alliance Partner Choice and CEOs’ Facial Structure

Strategic alliance, agency problems, and labor investment efficiency

Inter-firm strategic alliances, which are formed to facilitate resource allocation and improve efficiency, may also inadvertently lead to labor investment inefficiencies due to increased agency conflicts and managerial opportunism. Using a sample of Chinese firms, we find that strategic alliances significantly reduce labor investment efficiency by 4.5%. The reduction in labor investment efficiency takes the form of reduced revenue-generating capacity per unit of labor, overhiring of labor, and increased labor cost stickiness. Consistent with the agency view, we find that the negative effects of strategic alliances are more pronounced under weak corporate governance and high information asymmetry among alliance partners. Overall, the results highlight the complex dynamics of inter-firm strategic alliances and provide practical insights for improving labor investment efficiency in the context of inter-firm cooperation.

When friends are near foes: governing nonequity alliances with steering committees

PurposeIndirect knowledge leakage to rivals located near alliance partners represents a significant risk that has received limited scholarly attention. Hence, the question of how to manage this risk – which the authors term “partner-rival co-location risk” – in nonequity alliances remains unanswered, and this study aims to suggest establishing a steering committee to oversee the partnership.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the agglomeration economies and alliance governance literatures, the authors develop a set of hypotheses and perform a series of empirical tests on 470 nonequity alliances in the US biopharmaceutical industry.FindingsThe authors propose that there is a positive linkage between partner-rival co-location risk and the formation of a steering committee in a nonequity alliance, which receives strong empirical support. Further, this relationship is significantly moderated by the breadth (alliance scope) but not the depth (reciprocal interdependence) of interaction between the partnering firms.Originality/valueThis paper is a pioneer to shed light on “partner-rival co-location risk” and how partner-rival co-location risk affects the governance decision of whether to establish a steering committee in a nonequity alliance, thus offering important theoretical and practical insights into competition and cooperation in alliance management.

Strategic alliances and shared auditors

Strategic alliances are voluntary corporate arrangements for mutual benefit. Although alliances are common as an alternative to M&As, they require cooperation between alliance partners who continue to operate as independent companies. Thus, relational risk—the probability and consequences of unsatisfactory cooperation or opportunistic behavior—is inherent in alliances and a major determinant of alliance success. In this paper, we examine and find that alliance announcement CARs are higher for companies sharing the same auditor with their alliance partner. Further, our findings suggest that the shared auditor effect is stronger for alliances where potential relational risk between alliance partners is greater. Our findings hold when we use “withdrawn” (i.e., the withdrawal of an announced alliance before its start date) as an alternative, albeit inverse, measure of alliance success. Collectively, we provide novel evidence which suggests that auditors add shareholder value by playing a matchmaking role in alliance formation, building inter-company trust and mitigating relational risk by facilitating the sharing of non-financial information between potential alliance partners among their audit clients.

Sustainability Planning for a Community Network to Increase Participation in Evidence-Based Lifestyle Change Programs: A Mixed-Methods Approach.

Community-based chronic disease prevention programs can have long-term, broad public health benefits. Yet, only 40 to 60% of evidence-based health programs are sustained. Using established frameworks and evidence-based tools to characterize sustainability allows programs to develop structures and processes to leverage resources effectively to sustain effective program activities and systems. This study used a mixed-methods, partner-engaged approach to identify barriers and facilitators to sustaining a community network (the Alliance program) aimed to increase participation in evidence-based lifestyle change programs delivered in the community. Surveys and qualitative interviews were conducted with the Alliance partners based on the Program Sustainability Assessment Tool and Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research. Overall, partners felt Alliance had a high capacity for sustainability. Strategic planning, communication, and partnerships were areas partners prioritized to improve the potential for sustaining the program. Results informed the co-development of a sustainability action plan. This paper furthers our understanding of factors critical for the sustainability of community-based programs for chronic disease prevention and health equity and presents a process for developing action plans to build sustainability capacity.

MSMEs' innovation: a barrier approach

PurposeThis article presents a comprehensive analysis of innovation in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in India, focusing on the barriers and facilitators within their internal and external ecosystems.Design/methodology/approachA self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 1430 MSMEs across India, employing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze the relationships between internal and external factors and innovation adaptation.FindingsThe findings indicate that factors such as top management and organization structure, communication, technological capability and adaptation and organizational culture have a positive impact on innovation adaptation within the internal environment. Conversely, employee and market orientation, as well as financial factors, have a negative influence. Regarding the external environment, industry and competitive analysis, internationalization and partner alliances were found to positively affect innovation adaptation, whereas the country's infrastructure and policies had a negative impact.Originality/valueThe study emphasizes that MSMEs have the potential to leverage their internal and external environments to foster innovation within their organizations.