An analysis of Strategic alliances in UK steel industry

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Acknowledgement

I would take this opportunity to thank my research supervisor, family and friends for their support and guidance without which this research would not have been possible.

Declaration

I [type your full first names and surname here], declare that the contents of this dissertation/thesis represent my own unaided work, and that the dissertation/thesis has not previously been submitted for academic examination towards any qualification. Furthermore, it represents my own opinions and not necessarily those of the University.

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Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTII

DECLARATIONIII

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Background1

Problem Statement2

Research Objective2

Research Question2

Layout of the Report3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW5

Strategic Alliances5

Reasons for forming Strategic Alliance6

Management and Control in Strategic Alliances7

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY9

Research Design9

Research Instrument9

Data Collection Method9

Setting and Participants10

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION11

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION12

REFERENCES13



CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter will provide the background, objectives and the layout of the entire dissertation. It will focus upon the aims, objectives and the research questions that will be studied in the research.

Background

Firms enter strategic alliances in order to minimize costs that stem from coordination difficulties, to acquire know how and other parties resources, and to retain and develop one's own resources by combining with the other partner's resources (Chan et al., 1997). Strategic alliances have become well established organizational forms and a means of strategy implementation in business life (Inkpen, 2001). For example, “More than 20,000 corporate alliances have been formed worldwide over the past two years, and the number of alliances in the U.K. have increased by 25% each year since 1987,” and the total dollar value of those alliances is approximately $40 trillion dollars (Elmuti, and Kathawala, 2001). They are essential for attaining and maintaining competitive advantage that involve two-way knowledge transfers between actual or potential competitors (Elmuti and Kathawala, 2001; Hagedoorn, 1993).

Accordingly, Peter Drucker mentions that, “the greatest change in corporate structure-and in the way business is being conducted-may be the accelerating growth of relationships not based on ownership, but on partnership semi formal alliances of all sorts,” (Wall Street Journal, March 29, 1995, p.10).

Problem Statement

Strategic alliance is one of the most important ways for enterprise to cope with the challenges from the rapidly changing world.

Research Objective

The main goal is to investigate the types of strategic alliance; motives for creating strategic alliance; partner selection criteria in strategic alliance; Measure of strategic alliance performance and the success factors of strategic alliance in the UK steel industry. There has been a growing interest on the issue of strategic alliances in most of the industry. According to the research outcome, the results can be a reference to the steel and iron companies in United Kingdom when they consider about doing strategic alliances in the future. In order to accomplish the above research motivation, the specific objectives can be stated as below:

In order to understand the existing circumstances of strategic alliances in the iron and steel industry.

In order to understand the perspectives among successful strategic alliance firms and unsuccessful strategic alliance firms, what are their thoughts about the success factors of strategic alliances and ...