Background: Traditionally defined boundaries and borders between organizations are at present being re-evaluated because of new and tougher demands. Today we can see a trend where these boundaries are being lowered or even eliminated when organizations choose to co-operate instead of compete. Purpose: In order to create an understanding for the partner selection process in the newly founded joint ventures between the companies which are building the Swedish 3G Network, the determining factors are being studied. Delimitation: The studies companies are co-operating as network operators but are at the same time competing as mobile operators. This relationship is in the literature described as co-opetition, which will not be investigated in this paper. Realization: Taking our starting point in Geringer’s task- and partner-related approach, a simple model has been created for the task. Empirical data have been collected through interviews, and have been analyzed with this model. Results: Essentially the same factors have been found determining for the companies which have committed themselves for co-operation. These factors do however tend to differ partly between the two joint ventures that have been founded. In the Europolitan Vodafone” Hi3G joint venture, compatibility between top management and culture&structure seem to be the motivating factors. From a Telia - Tele2-perspective, the mutual factors seem to be financing and compatibility between top management. An important criterion has in both joint venture constellations to the access to existing real capital and infrastructure as well as having existing customers.

Background: A majority of strategic alliances do not create value for the participants. One of the main reasons for the high failure rate is an inadequate process for partner selection. If the correct partner is not selected, it can have serious effects on the management of the partnership. This is a serious problem since failed alliances usually are very expensive for the involved companies. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate which theoretical factors are important when selecting a partner for a strategic alliance. Further we aim to investigate how these factors can effect partner selection for small and middle size technology intensive companies. Realisation: The empirical part is based on interviews with persons holding key positions at four case companies. All the case companies are situated in Mjärdevi Science Park. Result: Our research has shown that the strategic fit is the crucial factor. Other important factors are brand, network position, compatibility and attention when selecting a partner for a strategic alliance.

After the deregulation of the airline industry new actors entered the market and among them were the low-cost airlines. These actors are not involved in the same traditional airline alliance used by the traditional airlines to strengthen their position on the market. Little research has been made regarding the benefits for low-cost airlines to engage in strategic alliances. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate if low-cost airlines benefit from engaging in strategic alliances or collaborations, and identify possible alliance configurations. To fulfill the purpose we have used a qualitative method and case studies. Interviews with respondents from two low-cost airlines as well as an airline industry field expert were used to gather information about the thesis subject. We have concluded that the low-cost airlines in this study benefit from engaging in strategic alliances. The low-cost airlines are using vertical as well as horizontal alliances principally to gain cost-reduction or efficiency benefits. Both cases were against traditional airline alliances due to the high costs involved, and the fact that they do not share the same motives for alliances.

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Le 25 octobre 1415, avec la disparition des derniers représentants du groupe par filiation directe, s'éteignait au combat le lignage de Craon dont la renommée et la fortune avaient été acquises, entre autres, sur les champs de bataille. Notre travail s'inscrit dans une perspective chronologique : la genèse du lignage des Craon au XIe siècle puis son fonctionnement jusqu'à sa disparition à Azincourt. À partir de l'étude sur la famille de Craon, nous proposons une réflexion sur le concept lignager. Pouvons-nous d'ailleurs parler sans nuance de lignage ? Le lignage du XIIe siècle ne ressemble pas à celui des siècles suivants : il s'agit d'une structure de parenté complexe recouvrant des réalités multiples. Si la nécessité d'une terminologie commune nous apparaît évidente, il convient cependant de rester prudent sur l'usage de " lignage ". Son emploi abusif en a appauvri le sens à tel point que nous avons l'impression que ce terme pose aujourd'hui un problème sémantique : peut-on opposer systématiquement deux structures de parenté - " carolingienne " et lignagère ? Le corpus documentaire des Craon nous met dans une position inconfortable puisqu'il nous oriente sur une structure de parenté particulière : le lignage. L'enjeu de ce travail consiste donc à formuler un questionnement sur le lignage à travers une documentation partielle et orientée qui en postule l'existence. L'emploi de ce terme ne nous offre qu'une vision simpliste de la parenté et ne prend pas assez en compte d'autres formes qui coexistent au même moment : sur une structure patrilinéaire de transmission des biens et des pouvoirs se plaque un système de filiation indifférenciée. Le monument funéraire des Craon, dans la chapelle des Cordeliers à Angers, réalisé par Maurice V de Craon à la fin du XIIIe siècle, est un document essentiel : il illustre une conception de la famille telle qu'elle se manifeste dans les actes de la pratique accordant une place essentielle aux alliances, au moins autant qu'à la filiation et dans laquelle la notion de lignage est difficile à cerner. Or, une telle représentation peut coexister avec d'autres, répondant à d'autres besoins et véhiculant d'autres messages : le lignage n'oblitère pas d'autres formes de parenté. Notre travail nous invite à remettre en cause les schémas modèles et à voir la parenté comme une intrication de systèmes diversement opératoires, par effet de sources ou selon le contexte, soumis au poids des normes canoniques omniprésentes à l'époque.

This thesis, which consists of three self-contained essays, examines, both theoretically and empirically, some of the economic and identity strategies and mechanisms that federated co-operatives, in particular, and strategic alliances, in general, can use to achieve co-operation and coordination. To accomplish this objective, the thesis uses a combination of industrial organization and game theory concepts from economics, insights from social and cognitive psychology, and evidence from in-depth interviews with decision-makers in the Co-operative Retailing System (CRS) - an association of 264 independent Western Canadian retail co-operatives and their wholesaler, Federated Co-operatives Ltd. (FCL).<p> Essay One combines a case study of the CRS with an examination, in a game-theoretic framework, of the co-operation and coordination problems arising among firms in alliances and the potential solutions to these problems suggested in the economics and business strategy literatures. One of the contributions of this essay is to provide examples of the mechanisms that can be used to implement these theoretical solutions in a business setting - i.e., the essay identifies practical ways for alliances to alter partner firms' payoffs, to provide private rewards, to monitor behaviour, to establish long term goals among partners, to build high group identification within the alliance, and to focus partners' expectations on the efficient outcomes. Another contribution of this essay is to identify some of the second-order co-operation problems that arise in strategic alliances - e.g., lack of incentives by alliance partners to contribute resources that are necessary to develop alliance management mechanisms - and to offer examples of the strategies that can be used to deal with these problems.<p> Essay Two draws upon social identity theory and develops an economic model of behaviour to show how the core firm in a strategic network can promote effective co-operation among network members by inducing them to identify with the network. In addition, the essay offers empirical evidence from the CRS that identity has successfully been used, together with economic mechanisms, to foster co-operation among member retails, and provides examples of the most important mechanisms that FCL, as the core firm in the CRS, has used to manage the identity of the retails. More generally, by incorporating the psychology (and sociology) of identity into an economic model of behaviour, Essay Two contributes to an emerging view that non-economic (behavioural) factors are complementary to the economic ones in the management of strategic partnerships.<p> Essay Three considers the collective action problems that arise in co-operatives when it comes to financing growth and identifies the conditions under which retained patronage can be an effective way for co-operatives to raise growth capital. The essay develops a game-theoretic model to examine the trade-off between the share of patronage refunds a co-operative wholesaler pays to member retails in cash and the share of patronage refunds it retains and invests, so as to provide retails with enough short-run benefits to encourage them to patronize their organization, while still retaining resources to invest in long-term growth. Analytical results show that when there are increasing returns in patronizing the co-operative wholesaler, retails' decisions to patronize their organization are complementary strategies and, as a result, multiple equilibria are possible. Some of these equilibria are ones with high patronage and high investment, while others are characterized by low patronage and low investment. Retails' expectations about the actions of their counterparts are critical in determining the prevailing equilibrium. The analysis also shows that the existence of the horizon problem further constraints the ability of the wholesaler to raise growth capital. Taken together, these results suggest that the retention of patronage refunds can be an effective way for the co-operative wholesaler to raise growth capital, provided it acts to focus retails' expectations on the 'good' equilibrium and to mitigate the horizon problem.<p> By examining the strategies and mechanisms that the CRS has used to achieve co-operation and coordination, and in so doing illustrating the mechanisms that firms can use to manage partner opportunism and prevent coordination failure, the thesis contributes to the alliance management literature. Firms today are increasingly forming strategic alliances with suppliers, buyers, and even competitors in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, despite their increasing popularity and value-creation potential, alliances more often fail than succeed, with alliance failure often attributed to opportunistic (non-co-operative) behaviour by one or more of the partners and to coordination failure. As a result, it is important to identify strategies and mechanisms that alliance partners can use to achieve co-operation and coordination, and thus realize the benefits from their association.<p> The thesis also contributes to the co-operative literature by shedding light on the age-old debate on whether federated co-operatives need to be centralized to ensure efficiency. In particular, the thesis shows that federated co-operatives can be efficient, provided they address the co-operation and coordination problems that arise among their members, and provides examples of the mechanisms that federated co-operatives can use to achieve co-operation and coordination. In addition, the thesis offers the first analytical treatment of how the horizon problem influences investment decisions in co-operatives.

This study investigates the impact of environmental factors on the decision to electronically integrate operations with international customers and/or suppliers. The following research question motivates the study: How does the environmental context affect the level of electronic integration of an organization with its international partners? This study elaborates on the concept of electronic integration. Studies on integration in general and electronic integration in particular adopt a loose definition of integration: they all agree in that integration is the opposite of markets, but they define this opposite in different terms: relationship contracting, long-term contracting, coordination, etc. Finally, the study also responds to Wathne and Heide’s (2004) call for a more comprehensive study of governance mechanisms in B2B, with emphasis on monitoring mechanisms.

In the first part of this thesis, we study revenue management in resource exchange alliances. We first show that without an alliance the sellers will tend to price their products too high and sell too little, thereby foregoing potential profit, especially when capacity is large. This provides an economic motivation for interest in alliances, because the hope may be that some of the foregone profit may be captured under an alliance. We then consider a resource exchange alliance, including the effect of the alliance on competition among alliance members. We show that the foregone profit may indeed be captured under such an alliance. The problem of determining the optimal amounts of resources to exchange is formulated as a stochastic mathematical program with equilibrium constraints. We demonstrate how to determine whether there exists a unique equilibrium after resource exchange, how to compute the equilibrium, and how to compute the optimal resource exchange. In the second part of this thesis, we study the estimation of risk measures in risk management. In the financial industry, sell-side analysts periodically publish recommendations of underlying securities with target prices. However, this type of analysis does not provide risk measures associated with underlying companies. In this study, we discuss linear regression approaches to the estimation of law invariant conditional risk measures. Two estimation procedures are considered and compared; one is based on residual analysis of the standard least squares method and the other is in the spirit of the M-estimation approach used in robust statistics. In particular, Value-at-Risk and Average Value-at-Risk measures are discussed in detail. Large sample statistical inference of the estimators is derived. Furthermore, finite sample properties of the proposed estimators are investigated and compared with theoretical derivations in an extensive Monte Carlo study. Empirical results on the real data (different financial asset classes) are also provided to illustrate the performance of the estimators.

Malgrat el gran nombre de recerques sobre els acords col·laboratius i la innovació, són pocs els estudis que examinen la influència de la col·laboració individual entre els membres d'una mateixa organització i la seva repercussió en la innovació de l'empresa. Això resulta sorprenent, perquè bastants estudis destaquen el paper important que les persones poden acomplir en els processos d'aprenentatge i adquisició de coneixements (p. ex., la mobilitat dels enginyers i els científics, els investigadors estrella i "boundary spanners"). En conseqüència, aquesta tesi investiga l'impacte de les col·laboracions interorganitzatives dels científics -recollides per la coautoria dels seus papers de recerca- en les innovacions patentades de les empreses. Els resultats indiquen que, fins i tot després de controlar alguns factors que ja han estat identificats per la seva incidència en els resultats innovadors de l'empresa -com ara les aliances estratègiques de l'empresa, els científics estrella i els que no ho són, la capacitat científica individual i la inversió en R+D-, el grau en què els científics d'una empresa col·laboren externament en articles científics influeix positivament en el seu acompliment innovador. A més, les col·laboracions individuals entre els investigadors d'empresa i els investigadors universitaris són especialment útils, i els transvasaments regionals milloren l'impacte de les col·laboracions individuals. Avalant les prediccions derivades de l'economia evolutiva i de les teories de la conducta, les empreses amb un nombre més alt de col·laboracions individuals externes tenen més probabilitats de créixer més a prop de la frontera de la innovació emergent. En canvi, les empreses amb més aliances estratègiques i col·laboracions individuals internes probablement creixeran més allunyades de la frontera de la innovació i l'especialització tecnològica redueix l'alineació de les empreses amb la frontera innovadora. Així doncs, aquesta tesi aïlla i destaca el paper de la col·laboració individual en el procés d'innovació de l'empresa. / Pese al gran número de investigaciones sobre las colaboraciones y la innovación, solo unos pocos estudios examinan la influencia de la colaboración individual entre los miembros de una misma organización y su repercusión en la innovación de la empresa. Ello resulta sorprendente, puesto que bastantes estudios destacan el importante rol que las personas pueden desempeñar en los procesos de aprendizaje y adquisición de conocimientos (p. ej., la movilidad de los ingenieros y los científicos, los investigadores estrella y los "boundary spanners"). En consecuencia, esta tesis investiga el impacto de las colaboraciones interorganizativas de los científicos -recogidas por la coautoría de sus papers de investigación- en las innovaciones patentadas de las empresas. Los resultados indican que, incluso después de controlar algunos factores que ya han sido identificados por su incidencia en los resultados innovadores de la empresa -como son las alianzas estratégicas de la empresa, los científicos estrella y los que no lo son, la capacidad científica individual y la inversión en I+D-, el nivel en que los científicos de una empresa colaboran externamente en artículos científicos influye positivamente en su desempeño innovador. Además, las colaboraciones individuales entre los investigadores de empresa y los investigadores universitarios son especialmente útiles, y los trasvases regionales mejoran el impacto de las colaboraciones individuales. Avalando las predicciones derivadas de la economía evolutiva y las teorías conductuales, las empresas con mayor número de colaboraciones individuales externas tienen mayores probabilidades de crecer más próximas a la frontera de la innovación emergente. En cambio, las empresas con mayor número de alianzas estratégicas y colaboraciones individuales internas probablemente crecerán más alejadas de la frontera de la innovación y la especialización tecnológica reduce la alineación de las empresas con la frontera innovadora. Así pues, esta tesis aísla y destaca el rol de la colaboración individual en el proceso de innovación de la empresa. / Despite the vast amount of research on collaborative arrangements and innovation, only a few studies examine influence of individual collaboration of members within an organization and their influence on firm innovation. This is surprising since several studies illustrate the important role individuals can play in knowledge acquisition and learning (e.g. mobility of engineers and scientist, star researchers and boundary spanners). Therefore, this dissertation investigates the impact of inter-organizational collaborations of scientists - as captured by co-authorship of research papers - on the patented innovative of firms. The results indicate that even after controlling for factors that have been previously suggested to impact the innovative output of a firm - including the firm's strategic alliances, star and non-star scientists, individual-level scientific ability, and R&D investment - the extent to which a firm's scientists collaborate externally on scientific articles positively influences the firm's innovative performance. Furthermore, individual collaborations between firm researchers and university researchers are particularly useful and regional spillovers enhance the impact of individual collaborations. Supporting the predictions derived from evolutionary economics and behavioral theories, firms with greater numbers of external individual collaborations are likely to grow increasingly aligned to the frontier of emerging innovation. Firms with greater numbers of strategic alliances and internal individual collaborations are likely to grow more distant from the innovation frontier and technological specialization decreases the alignment of firms to the innovative frontier. Thus this dissertation isolates and highlights the role of individual level collaboration in the firm innovation process.

Information from the Human Genome Project is being integrated into the drug discovery and development process to permit novel drug targets to be identified, clinical trial testing to be made more efficient, and efficacious therapeutics to be approved and made widely available. Knowledge of the genome will allow for the description and quantification of disease and susceptibility to disease as informational errors or deficits. The creation and application of knowledge occur through cooperative or competitive interactions, often reflecting the perceived value of the knowledge. The public or private value of the knowledge, both for itself and for potential applications, can be determined through an understanding of the classification and characterization of this knowledge, as well as the position of the knowledge within the drug discovery and development pipeline. The transformation of knowledge from a purely public good to a quasi-private good has highlighted the need for balance between incentives for the market provision of scientific and technological knowledge by an innovator and incentives for the market provision of incremental knowledge by a follow-on developer. It has been suggested that a patent system developed for a discrete model of innovation may no longer be optimal for an information-based, cumulative model of innovation. Consequently, it is necessary to reanalyze models of intellectual property protection and strategies of knowledge sharing in biopharmaceutical discovery research. Under certain conditions, the biotech commons is an efficient institution that can preserve downstream opportunities for multiple researchers fairly and efficiently. A framework for classifying and characterizing discovery knowledge is developed in this research and the role of research consortia in preserving the biotech commons is analyzed. This study also addresses the value of pooling versus unilaterally holding knowledge, the benefits associated with appropriating from the commons, the role of knowledge characteristics in bargaining between licensor and licensee, and the overall management of the biotech commons.