Ein empirisch belegtes Phänomen ist die steigende Anzahl strategischer Allianzen von Unternehmen, speziell in dynamischen Wettbewerbsumgebungen. Über strategische Allianzen versuchen Unternehmen, auch in einer dynamischen Wettbewerbsumwelt unter hoher Unsicherheit Wettbewerbsvorteile aufzubauen. Dabei belegen verschiedene Forschungsarbeiten, dass strategische Allianzen häufig scheitern und weisen übereinstimmend relativ niedrige Erfolgsquoten von 50% nach. Harbison und Pekár belegen zwischen Unternehmen eine hohe Varianz und identifizieren, dass einige Unternehmen bei 87% ihrer strategischen Allianzen erfolgreich sind, während andere Unternehmen nur eine Erfolgsrate von 37% aufweisen. Die Fragestellung, warum Unternehmen in dieser Hinsicht so signifikant differieren, bildet die grundlegende Motivation für die vorliegende Arbeit. Die Ursache für die hohe Varianz der Erfolgsrate von strategischen Allianzen zwischen Unternehmen, ist in den internen Prozessen und Strukturen der Unternehmen zu vermuten. Diese unternehmensinternen Prozesse und Strukturen werden mit dem Begriff Allianzfähigkeit bezeichnet. 1. Forschungsfrage Aus welchen Prozessen und Strukturen besteht Allianzfähigkeit in Unternehmen? 2. Forschungsfrage Wie entwickelt sich Allianzfähigkeit in Unternehmen? Die vermutete Kausalität zwischen Allianzfähigkeit und der Erfolgsrate bei strategischen Allianzen verweist auf einen post-positivistischen Charakter der Untersuchung. Es wird auf wissenschaftliche Literatur, aber auch auf Beiträge von Unternehmensberatungen, Nichtregierungsorganisationen und andere Quellen zurückgegriffen, wie es als Forschungsansatz im Kontext strategischer Allianzen vorgeschlagen wird. Zunächst werden im zweiten Kapitel die beiden beobachtbaren Phänomene, eine steigende Dynamik der Wettbewerbsumwelt vieler Unternehmen und die zunehmende Anzahl strategischer Allianzen, die Interdependenzen aufweisen, unter Einbeziehung der Literatur, charakterisiert. Insbesondere die Motive von Unternehmen und deren Strategien zum Eingehen strategischer Allianzen werden erläutert. Im folgenden dritten Kapitel werden die traditionellen Erklärungsansätze des strategischen Managements anhand einer empirischen Literaturanalyse skizziert. Das Ergebnis der empirischen Literaturanalyse ist die Notwendigkeit eines neuen theoretischen Zugangs, der die gestiegene Dynamik der Wettbewerbsumwelt stärker reflektiert und interne Prozesse von Unternehmen intensiver betrachtet. Mit den Beiträgen von Teece et al., Eisenhardt und Martin, scheint sich der fähigkeitsorientierte Ansatz als neue Erklärungsperspektive zu etablieren. Der junge fähigkeitsorientierte Ansatz wird als geeignet identifiziert und im vierten Kapitel ausführlich dargestellt sowie in seinen aktuellen Entwicklungen erläutert. Das vierte Kapitel bildet den theoretischen Rahmen für das folgende fünfte Kapitel, das die Charakterisierung von Allianzfähigkeit auf der Grundlage eines Literaturreviews umfasst und direkt die Forschungsfragen anhand einer Modellentwicklung adressiert. Erkennt¬nisse aus anderen theoretischen Perspektiven werden in den fähigkeitsorientierten Ansatz übertragen und in das Modell integriert. Ein Vorgehen, das in der Tradition des strategischen Managements, insbesondere der Beiträge zum fähigkeitsorientierten Ansatz, steht. Im sechsten Kapitel wird das skizzierte Modell als Grundlage verwendet, um die Entwicklung von Allianzfähigkeit empirisch anhand einer Longitudinal-Fallstudie zu untersuchen. Die Analyse von Allianzfähigkeit sollte vor dem Hintergrund einer hohen Wettbewerbsdynamik unter der Bedingung von Hyperwettbewerb (Kriterium 1) in einer Branche erfolgen, bei der strategische Allianzen eine hohe Rolle spielen (Kriterium 2). Darüber hinaus soll die Möglichkeit bestehen, Zugang zu Dokumenten, Interviewpartnern sowie Datenbanken zu erhalten (Kriterium 3). Aufgrund dieser Kriterien wurde die Börsenindustrie als Industrie und die Deutsche Börse als Unternehmen ausgewählt. Das Ziel der Fallstudie ist die Darstellung der Entwicklung der strategischen Allianzen der Deutschen Börse von 1997 bis 2007, um Rückschlüsse auf die Allianzfähigkeit des Unternehmens ziehen zu können. Da die Entwicklung der Allianzfähigkeit im Vordergrund der Fallstudie steht, wird eine Längsschnittfallstudie mit chronologischem Aufbau verwendet. Dabei wurden drei verschiedene Quellen, Experteninterviews, Datenbanken sowie Dokumente, ausgewertet. / Firms are confronted by a lot of internal and external challenges within a dynamic competitive environment. Especially the increasing technological change derived from innovations, the fast diffusion of new technologies, the development of new business models, and the globalization are known as the main drivers for this. The consequence is increasing dynamism and complexity in business relations resulting in the emergence of strategic alliances, such as joint ventures, virtual organizations, and loose contractual agreements among firms. In this contribution strategic alliances are defined as cooperative agreements of any form with the aim of strengthening the partners’ positions in an industry (Arino & la Torre, 1998). Opportunities for risk and knowledge sharing among business partners, obtaining new veins for new markets, and the possibility to add new competencies are the main forces behind this trend towards strategic alliances (Prahalad & Hamel, 1994). Several quantitative studies counted an increasing number of international strategic alliances during the past four decades (Büchel, 2004; Gomes-Casseres, 1988; Hagedoorn & van Kranenburg, 2003; Narula & Hagedoorn, 1998). But even if the strategic alliances are popular, several studies reported a high failure rate of strategic alliances between 40% and 60% (Drago, 1997; Bresser & Harl, 1986; Hennart, Kim & Zeng, 1998; Park & Ungson, 2001). Harbison and Pekár (1998) analyzed that some firms have a success rate in strategic alliancing of 87% while other firms have a success rate of only 37%. The main motivation of this contribution is to address this significant difference and to analyze the impact of internal capabilities in strategic alliances. Therefore we argue that firms need a specific capability to build up and develop strategic alliances, which is labeled as the alliance capability. This contribution covers two research questions: (1) Which processes and structures determine alliance capability? (2) How do firms develop alliance capability? Even if alliance capability covers identifiable routines and resources, it has a dynamic character which means that these capabilities could increase or decrease over time. This capability is a result of learning processes and past dependent experiences. An alliance capability is positively related to an increased absorptive capacity and to a firm’s performance in the full sense of successful behavior in the market (Kapur et al., 2005). Therefore an alliance capability is necessary to operate in a co-opetitive environment which is characterized by Bresser and Harl (1986) or more recently by Luo (2007). Schilke (2007) argues that an alliance capability has an influence on the competitive advantages of a firm. This contribution will describe a research framework of alliance capability to analyze the roles of resources, processes, and paths in respect of alliance capability. To validate the model, an explorative study of the alliance activities of Deutsche Boerse Group (DBAG), a global stock exchange company, between 1997 and 2007 will be performed.

Free and Open Source Software has not only increased researchers’ interest about community-driven software development, but lately, interest from commercial actors increased as well. In addition, some scientists have claimed that Open Source Software has entered a new phase: OSS 2.0. Even so, a coherent way of analyzing commercial Open Source ventures is still missing. Commercial Open Source firms’ strategies are often described using the term “business models”. However, these models often lack stringent structures and have been used primarily to describe the firms’ offerings and methods to earn revenue. Through the adaptation of an existing, firmly theoretically-based analytical business model framework, this thesis suggests a new analysis model for studying for-profit Open Source companies. In addition, the framework is generically constructed, ensuring its usability for other industries as well. The model consists of three elements: market positions, operational platform and offering. This particular study concerned four software product vendors, all of which base their products on Open Source Software. When analyzing their business, insights were made about how these firms operated. The result show that there are certain key elements and factors that determine if a company has a sustainable business or not. From the analysis framework, three elements were refined. The main Open Source Software project connects the market positions and the operational platform; and from the offering, the product and service and the revenue model were very important. The study identified eight key factors which influenced the elements: brand for the product, the company and the Open Source Software project; community, that is the sum of the non-paying users and developers connected to Open Source Software projects; resources, which are community-based resources such as development and testing; legitimacy, the perceived legitimacy regarding licenses and the revenue models; control, i.e. the control the firm has of the software; ability to charge, or how the company can charge for its services; customers, the paying users; and finally volume, which is the number of paying customers. The findings also indicate that companies interested in working with the open-source community have to be able to balance the demands from both their customers and the community in order to benefit and gain competitive advantage. / Report code: LiU-TEK-LIC 2008:26.

In recent years, the rise of the BRIC economies (China, India, Brazil and Russia) has caused industries in the developed and even in the developing countries, to shift toward the rising economies. The Chinese market has in the recent years become the fastest growing market with tremendous potential. Business enterprises have not only laid their eyes on the cheap labor costs, but are also deeply attracted by its market opportunities. Taiwan holds the advantage of being close in geographic proximity, and similar language and culture with China. Many Taiwanese business enterprises have made China the first choice when considering extending business to foreign markets. However, the enormous market incentives have accelerated competition within the industry. In addition to survival, it is more important for business enterprises to continually grow and profit. Therefore it is the aim of this study to investigate how business enterprises could find ways of ensuring its survival, which allows it to grow and profit, in the fierce Chinese battlefield. It is hoped from the study of Chinese business environment and analysis of current status, that key success factors of Taiwanese business enterprises in the industry can be identified. It is expected that the results of the study can be valuable recommendations to the industry. The traditional industries have always been the foundation of Taiwan¡¦s economic growth. The contributions made by the manufacturing industry to the economic growth of Taiwan cannot be overlooked. However, as the high-tech industries prosper and change of the domestic industry structure, traditional industries had been in an inferior position with respect to acquisition of resource, such as human and financial resources. Faced with a fierce competitive environment, how the traditional manufacturing industries break out of the growth-stagnant bottleneck requires the identification of key success factors of the industry. Business strategies should be developed according to such factors, putting effort in strengthening and building on the success factors, so that greatest leverage of limited resources can bring profit and continued competitive advantage. Although the copper alloy industry is considered a traditional industry, its products serve downstream users in ironmongery, electric appliance and electronics. The industry has its critical value of existence in the market¡¦s supply chain. Hence, the copper alloy plants have been chosen as he subject for this study. Through research and analysis of the industry, the study seeks to identify the critical success factors of copper alloy strip manufacturers in managing the Chinese market. The results will enable business enterprises to develop strategies for managing the Chinese market. This is a qualitative case study. Three largest copper alloy strip manufacturers were selected for the case study. Further to collection of secondary data on the copper alloy strip industry and supply-demand status of the China market, interviews were conducted with middle to senior managers of the manufacturers in the industry. Through the arrangement, analysis and study of secondary data and interviews, key success factors of the copper alloy industry were identified. The buying decisions and end user perspectives were referenced to validate the success factors identified from research. The study hopes to include the end user¡¦s purchasing perspectives into the key success factors identified from industry analysis. It is hoped that the key factors identified could be more objective, so that the success factors would be of value to business enterprises. Lastly, the key success factors of Taiwanese copper alloy strip manufacturers in conducting business in China are: (1) acquisition of core technology for high level products, (2) acquiring personnel with international capabilities and specialized knowledge in copper industry, (3) promote the bargaining power with raw material suppliers, (4) sound financial structure and financial management capabilities, and (5) establishment of network relationships. These five key success factors revolve around three critical resources, namely technology, human resource and financial resource. Through external networks, the strength of these three internal resources can bring about positive effects.

This study uses academic literature from peer-reviewed journals to assess the literary consensus of the three perspectives. The literature has been found by using specific keywords and an assortment of scholarly databases. The analysis of the literature is structured according to explanations for alliance formation, the attainment of advantages, and disadvantages according to the perspectives. The study is written in article format. Conclusions: The perspectives both overlap and differ from one another but focus on different aspects and incentives. There are, however, more similarities between the resource-based and knowledge-based views. Transaction cost theory and the knowledge-based view are narrow explanatory models, whereas the resource-based view offers a broader view on alliances.

The world today is confronted by the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1920’s. Due to the financial system being globalised and interdependent, the contagion effects of the financial crisis trickled down to Europe and ultimately triggered the recession of 2007-2009, which had far-reaching repercussions on cross-border economic activities. The severe international downturn had a significant effect on the Swedish economy and Swedish SMEs. Moreover, the recession has heightened economic uncertainty and combined with the existing challenges facing SMEs, created one of the most difficult business climates in decades, hence, a prevailing need for creating resilience. The purpose of this study is to examine how Swedish Internationalised SMEs remain resilient during times of recession. This will be studied through investigating what resources and capabilities were crucial for building resilience and how the SMEs changed their strategy during the recession to remain resilient. The study is conducted through a qualitative case study and an abductive approach in order to get a profound insight into the firm’s behaviour. The theoretical framework is founded on the area of strategy and resilience, by accounting for strategy formulation, the RBV, resilience and strategic change. Moreover, the empirical chapter presents the results of the data gathered from the six case companies and is structured according to the companies and the three research problems. In the analysis, the patterns emerging from the theoretical framework and the empirical data is analysed based on the three research problems through trying to understand the underlying reasons for the emerging patterns. The study conclude that Swedish internationalized SMEs remained resilient during the recession of 2007- 2009, through reconfiguring its critical resources and capabilities, and changing their strategy to adapt to the changes in the external environment caused by the recession.

The recent explosion of digital data has led the business world to a new era towards a more evidence-based decision making. Companies nowadays collect, store and analyze huge amount of data and the terms such Big Data Analytics are used to define those practices. This paper investigates how Big Data Analytics (BDA) can be perceived and used as a driver for companies’ Competitive Advantage (CA). It thus contributes in the debate about the potential role of IT assets as a source of CA, through a Resource-Based View approach, by introducing a new phenomenon such as BDA in that traditional theoretical background. A conceptual model developed by Wade and Nevo (2010) is used as guidance, where the concept of synergy developed between IT assets and other organizational resources is seen as crucial in order to create such a CA. We focus our attention on the Food Retail industry and specifically investigate two case studies, ICA Sverige AB and Masoutis S.A. The evidence shows that, although this process is at an embryonic stage, the companies perceive the implementation of BDA as a key driver for the creation of CA. Efforts are put in place in order to develop successful implementation of BDA within the company as a strategic tool for several departments, however, some hurdles have been spotted which might impede that practice.

The phenomenon of Born Globals in particular to the internationalization process has been highlighted by many scholars. The insufficient of the existing researches to the ability of Born Globals going international since their inceptions with limited resources encouraged us to study more in-depth. Resource-based View (RBV) and firm‟s competitive advantage are chosen as the theoretical framework. Three Swedish Born Globals were chosen as case studies, the data was collected by semi-structure and e-mail interviews which within-case and cross-case analysis were applied. The empirical data and analysis draws us to the conclusion that human resource especially entrepreneurs and network are the key firm resources that significantly contribute to Born Globals‟ establishment, internationalization and competitive advantage. However, the finding is highlighted that entrepreneur has a crucial role to both establishment and internationalization stages. Entrepreneur‟s personal network has high contribution when Born Globals is started up while firm‟s network plays more important role at the internationalization stage. By using network, Born Globals gain an easier way to find financial and operating resource. Moreover, entrepreneur‟s capability is the main key resource that creates competitiveness to Born Global firms. Future research suggestions and implications are discussed in the conclusion.

There is a growing need to better understand environmental decision making in the context of climate change and limited renewable resources. This dissertation deepens our understanding of such decision making by focusing on strategic green decisions, which can be defined as the individual and collaborative green decisions within or between organizations that help organizations improve their operating position, adapt to changes in their external institutional environments, and simultaneously generate environmental benefits. The particular focus is on decisions related to energy in the North American context. The research draws on and contributes to organizational theory with the aim of better understanding those factors that motivate and/or facilitate green decisions by organizations, especially social economy organizations—an area of only limited research to date. Two complementary empirical studies address the overarching research goal. The first study focuses on understanding the nature and extent of the association between organizational attributes and those factors that motivate and/or facilitate a green energy decision. Insights are based on a bi-national survey of 212 organizations that voluntarily began to purchase green electricity between 1999 and 2008. Findings indicate that important influences are similar across organizational types. Survey results highlight the importance of organizational culture and internal champions—both individually and in combination—in making the initial decision to purchase green electricity, despite its relatively higher price. These two factors, as well as strategic benefits, emerge as the dominant explanations for why organizations expand their green energy purchases. The relative importance and particular roles of these factors vary across organizational and decision types. The second empirical study extends our understanding of how organizations adapt to external changes while maintaining the capacity to innovate in order to address their core objectives. The focus is on the residential energy services market, and is based on 12 interviews with the executive directors of non-profit environmental service organizations (ESOs) that are part of a national network called Green Communities Canada. These organizations survived a funding shock by creating new services and diversifying funding sources with actions that collectively can be referred to as ‘green collaborative entrepreneurship’; collaborative because it was facilitated by strategic partnerships with businesses and local governments, as well as the cross-national social capital network connecting the ESOs. The important motivating factors of green collaborative entrepreneurship were the green values and objectives that drive these organizations. The facilitating factors of green collaborative entrepreneurship included human capital, social capital and strategic partnerships, which acted as dynamic capabilities because of their flexibility to help increase the level of entrepreneurship when necessary for organizational survival, and yet, scale-up and deliver core programs during stable funding periods. The dissertation provides important insights into broad questions related to green decisions, especially for organizations that are affected by political policy cycles. The findings highlight that organizations are able to be more environmentally sustainable while also improving their own strategic performance by making green decisions that either provide the capacity to adapt to exogenous change for survival, or to create endogenous change for competitive advantage. The research contributes to our understanding of societal transitions to sustainable development by highlighting two green decisions that are occurring in the social economy. The dissertation contributes to organizational theory and in particular the traditional corporate literature by including multiple organizational types. Sustainability researchers should focus on green decisions that both enhance organizational stability and ecological sustainability if they wish to better understand creative green solutions from organizations.

With advances in information technology, various cloud computing related research and development has become a hot trend. Except the vast amount of studies and reports appearing in local magazines and newspapers, government agencies have also set up corresponding R & D projects. However, most of these studies focus on the infrastructure or platform level of the cloud. For example, the projects for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) include the Cloud Computing Center for Mobile Application at Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), the Cloud Service and Technology Center at Information Industry Institute (III) and the already launched ¡§hiCloud¡¨ at Chunghwa Telecom Corporation. In the business side, there is TCloud Computing that does the development of both "Infrastructure" and "Platform as a Service" (PaaS). As to Software as a Service (SaaS) related research, III has gathered 10 domestic companies to participate the co-operation plans for education cloud, manufacture cloud, ¡K and practice cloud, a total of nine cloud services. However, they are all in the early stages without much success stories or usages. The study of this thesis is angled toward business needs, from the point of resource-based analysis to see how a firm will be affected if introduction of SaaS to business. In particular, we will study this subject from four dimensions, which are the competitiveness of enterprises, IT outsourcing strategy, cost structure analysis and data security technology, to identify the possible critical factors for the introduction for cloud computing services. As most people are perceived, cloud computing has a comparative advantage of cost saving over traditional approach.

Recently years, TFT-LCD industry has become the major development policy in Taiwan, and the scale of investment of the TFT-LCD¡¦s industry has become more and more in Taiwan, Japan and Korea. The Profit of the TFT-LCD monitor and television industry has been compressed very seriously to injure the chance and cost advantage of the second-string companies to run above business. Hence, this research is focused on a case of a TFT-LCD company termed ¡§A company¡¨ owns two old generation factories, and uses the strategy theories of scenario analysis, competition advantage, five forces analysis, resource-based view, value chain and so on and strategy tools of strategy map and balanced scorecard to analyze and find out the transformation strategy of the case of the ¡§A company¡¨ to build up the best competition advantage. To realize the competition status of outside and internal environment of TFT-LCD industry, and the resources base of the case of ¡§A company¡¨ in Taiwan, and the development situation using scenario analysis in order to define the direction of the operation strategy of the case of ¡§A company¡¨ that owns two third generation factories. The result is using strategy development tools of strategy map, balanced scorecard, key performance indicator management to develop the execution plan and performance measure indicators of the transformation strategy.