In Taiwan, many clinics and hospitals have struggled to survive since the implementation of nationalized health care insurance. According to the recent health care insurance policy, a hospitals¡¦ revenue is based on the number of patients treated. For small-scale clinics and hospitals, it is hard to compete with the large medical centers because: first, the clinics are limited to its financial strength, staff, and equipment; second, the co-payment of medical service in mid and small-scale hospitals is not much more inexpensive than in the large medical centers; third, the patient¡¦s referral program is not well established. In order to survive, some small clinics start to form an alliance and provide more versatile service to their patients. By doing so, the hospitals are able to cut down cost, operate more efficiently, and ease the financial crisis. In this research, we focus on local hospitals and their strategic partners to study the limitations and difficulties that the hospitals confront in the current health care environment; the hospitals¡¦ advantages and opportunities, the disadvantage and potential crisis of the hospitals; and the key factors of success of the hospitals. The results show that without changing the ownership and management team, the hospitals adopt vertical alliance. Such alliance includes patient¡¦s referral program, staff training, technical support, information exchanging and sharing, and centralized purchasing of medical products and equipment. Above all, the patient¡¦s referral program is the most important plan. The key factors of success of the hospitals are several. First, before the implementations of nationalized health care insurance, some types of alliances have existed among hospitals and clinics. Next, when setting up new clinics, they can become productive in a short period of time by obtaining resources from their own hospitals and duplicating their successful model based on past experiences. They form cross ownership and thus they are not only familiar with the operation but also share the same business version. Also, centralizing patients who need surgical operation in one hospital help cut down the cost. Finally, setting up new LASIK center especially for those LASIK patients prefer superior quality service and are willing to pay at their own expense.

This research studies Taiwan biggest three vehicle lamp makers and Advanced Lighting System (ALS) R&D Alliance. Firstly, the competition ralations of ALS three lamp makers are examined by Five Forces Model. Secondly, through the viewpoints of ¡§Co-opetition¡¨ and ¡§Co-opetition Value Net¡¨, the factors and processes of from competiton to cooperation between those three lamp makers are analyzed. By the way, the possible problems of sharing maket profits after cooperation are brought up. The main conclusions of this research are¡G 1. It¡¦s difficult to change competitors to be the complementors collaboratively researching and developing together. The process take time and efforts. Strategic alliances are suggested to adapt so-called ¡§Exclusion Clause¡¨, allowing partial members work together by individual projects under confidential agreements. 2. R&D platforms offer the environment of mutual learning and resources sharing. It helps switching competitors to complementors in long term. Alliance members can take advantages from each others through co-working process. 3. The contributions from the joints of future customers and more suppliers will help the commercialization of R&D achievements, while establishing R&D alliances. 4. The multilateral relations of strategic alliance members become complicated as competition occurs inside. ¡§Co-opetition Value Net¡¨ can be applied to explain the condition which competition and cooperation exit together in strategic alliance.

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The travel industry is located at the midstream of the tourism and plays a crucial role in the integration of resources. However, due to its susceptibility to the season, business prosperity, and natural or man-made disasters, the market demand in travel industry is fairly instable. Moreover, the entry-barrier is rather low in this industry, which makes it so competitive that no single enterprise can predominate over others. Consequently, to form a strategic alliance has become an imperative to survive, and a PAK alliance has been proved to be effective in practice for many years. Many travel agencies in Taiwan have taken advantage of a PAK alliance to achieve goals like a high corporate achievement or product-line expansion¡Ketc. This research discusses chiefly about what attitude the scale of business have when joining in a PAK alliance, including their motives, partner-selection, and performance improvement. Furthermore, this study probes into key factors of the success of a PAK alliance and looks into the prospect of tourism. The major findings of this research are listed below: 1. Large-scale businesses participate in a PAK alliance mainly in view of the ¡¥¡¦motive of resources¡¦¡¦, and put much more emphasis on the ¡¥¡¦market strength¡¦¡¦ of their partners. However, an alliance offers nearly no help on the part of ¡¥¡¦financial performances¡¦¡¦. 2. Middle-scale businesses participate in a PAK alliance also mainly in view of the ¡¥¡¦motive of resources¡¦¡¦, and put much more emphasis on the ¡¥¡¦ consistency of business culture¡¦¡¦ between they and their partners. Besides, an alliance can substantially assist them in gaining ¡¥¡¦market strength¡¦¡¦. 3. Small-scale businesses participate in a PAK alliance mainly in view of the ¡¥¡¦motive of economy¡¦¡¦, and put much more emphasis on the ¡¥¡¦ consistency of business culture¡¦¡¦ and ¡¥¡¦network¡¦¡¦ between they and their partners. Besides, an alliance can substantially assist them in the ¡¥¡¦accumulation of organization competence¡¦¡¦. 4. Small-scale businesses pay much attention to the influence of ¡¥¡¦human factors¡¦¡¦ on the success of a PAK alliance. 5. All types of businesses consider it plausible and inevitable for alliance members to cause damage to the overall benefit, and when it does happen, they deal passively with it. 6. In the future, businesses would place little importance on PAK alliance; instead, they are supposed to think highly of the potentiality of their main products if they are competent and the market allows them to do so, and PAK products merely serve to increase the diversity of products.

Abstract For recent years, enterprises in Taiwan face the challenges of global competition. Most of Taiwan companies cannot compete with international companies on capital or scale. Thus cooperation with competitors or formation of strategic alliance become one of the best policy of reducing management and sales cost of entering new market and business risks. For the small-and-medium size enterprises which own unique skills but are lack of resources and new technologies, it could be the niche of entering global market to obtain transfer of technologies and management skill from superior internationalized enterprises. Door lock manufacturing industry is an absolute conservative industry. From the ancient year, due to security concern, it was a family inherited business. Through technology breakthrough and industrial revolution, it gradually turns into a mass production industry. Like most of the other industry, in recent years, Taiwan was developed to be an important manufacturing base of the global door lock industry. This thesis adopted the exploring methodology. It conducted its study based on the industrial analysis. It analyzes the door lock industry through horizontal analysis ¡V competitor analysis and vertical analysis ¡V supply chain analysis. It further create the following assumptions based on the resources interdependence theory, transaction cost theory and Porter¡¦s five forces analysis: 1. The motivation of strategic alliance is based on the resources interdependence theory. 2. The selection of partner in the strategic alliance is based on the transaction cost theory. 3. The objectives of strategic alliance are based on Porter¡¦s five forces analysis. Based on the above assumptions, this study conducted analysis on the strategic alliance project in between Taiwan Fu Hsing Industrial Co. Ltd. and Ingersoll Rand Group of companies. Through in-depth interviews with management executives from both companies, this study build up a model confirming the above assumptions. Further more, this thesis also present a series of recommendations to both companies in hope of leading this strategic alliance project into a win-win situation. Key words: Strategic alliance, Door lock industry

National Health Insurance in Taiwan has been implemented since March 1, 1995. With changes and challenges of medical treatment policy and environment, the strategic management of medical treatment should be re-adjusted. In order to adapt to the new healthcare environment, the different strategic alliances will be adopted by private sectors. By doing so, the organizations would gain the necessary resources, such as patients, and financial supports, to achieve the goals of mutual benefit. The purposes of this study were to examine the financial performance before and after strategic alliance, and to investigate the patient satisfaction after the implementation. The research is divided three parts to discuss: 1. Financial achievement: to gather the relatively financial data of implementing strategic alliance around ten months in A clinic and B hospital to discuss the efficiency of strategic alliance. 2. Efficiency evaluation after employees knows the implement of strategic alliance: the research will take the employees in five hospitals and clinics that have participated in policy alliance as a sample with questionnaire investigation to discuss whether "the management achievement evaluation of strategic alliance" has any significant difference in the different characteristics of the employees. 3. Satisfaction of going to doctors after strategic alliance has implemented: the research will take the patients who accept retina operation as a sample with telephone questionnaire investigation after the implement of strategic alliance to discuss whether the characteristics of patients satisfaction of going to doctors have any significant difference, and whether the medical treatment result, the process of going to doctors, and the process of medical treatment have any significant difference. The research found the followings: 1. Before implementing strategic alliance, we have evaluated A clinic's advantages, disadvantages, and its purpose of establishing strategic alliance. It found that strategic alliance is workable for A clinic for long-term. Moreover, for retina operation, basing on financial achievement, the management gross profit increases after the strategic alliance. 2. The management achievement evaluation of the personal characteristics are significant difference of the evaluation of the customer-guide. 3. The patients characteristics of the education degree, the satisfaction of the process in going to doctors¡¨, and ¡§the satisfaction of the process in medical treatment¡¨ have the significant difference. 4. ¡§The medical treatment result¡¨, ¡§the satisfaction of the process in going to doctors¡¨, and ¡§the satisfaction of the process in medical treatment¡¨ of the patients reveals the significant difference. 5. ¡§The degree of the disease improvement¡¨ and ¡§the medical treatment process¡¨ of the patients is in the positive relation.

Nowadays, firms increasingly rely on strategic alliances to reach out for unique technological knowledge that firms cannot develop internally. However, in previous literature, we find inconsistent findings regarding the drivers and outcomes of a firm's leverage of alliance partners' technological knowledge. In this dissertation, I consider opposite propositions in prior studies simultaneously and examine two research questions: 1) what motivates a firm to search technological knowledge from alliance partners? And 2) how configurations of alliance knowledge and alliance network affect firm innovation? I argue that alliance knowledge search motivation is determined by the allocation of managerial attention to local domains and distant domains. While distant attention motives alliance knowledge search, local attention suppresses the motivation. I hypothesize that innovation performance below the aspiration level intensifies both local and distant attentions and has an inverted U-shaped relationship with alliance knowledge search intensity. This curvilinear relationship is moderated by the focal firm's knowledge stock size since firms with large knowledge stock are more likely to develop distant attention in the presence of poor innovation performance. I further argue that exploration and exploitation play key roles in the configurations of both alliance knowledge and alliance network. Alliance knowledge leveraging can contribute more to firm innovation, if the firm can establish a balance between exploration and exploitation. I propose that balancing exploration and exploitation within a single domain (e.g., search moderately explorative alliance knowledge) generates great managerial costs. However, firms can balance exploration and exploitation across domains: they can leverage explorative knowledge through exploitative alliances, such as repeated partnerships and strong ties. I test related hypotheses using longitudinal data from the U.S. biopharmaceutical industry. Results show that: 1) innovation performance below the aspiration level has an inverted U-shaped relationship with alliance knowledge search, demonstrating that both distant and local attention play important roles in developing the motivation for alliance knowledge search; 2) increasing knowledge stock size increases both positive and negative effects of innovation performance below aspiration; 3) technological distance of searched alliance knowledge has a linear negative effect on firm innovation; and 4) leveraging explorative knowledge from repeated partnership, but not strong ties, leads to superior innovation performance, supporting the idea of establishing the balance across domains. The findings make important contributions to alliance knowledge leveraging, aspiration, and exploration-exploitation literatures. The managerial implications of the study are also discussed. / Ph. D. / Nowadays, firms increasingly rely on strategic alliances to reach out for unique technological knowledge that firms cannot develop internally. By absorbing and utilizing these unique technologies, firms leverage alliance knowledge for their own technological innovation. However, in previous literature, we find inconsistent findings regarding the drivers and outcomes of alliance knowledge leverage. In this dissertation, I consider opposite propositions in prior studies simultaneously and examine the motivations and outcomes of a firm’s alliance knowledge leverage. First, I propose that the firm’s poor innovation performance is an important antecedent of alliance knowledge leverage. I hypothesize that, when a firm’s innovation performance is below the aspiration level, <i>i.e.</i>, below the firm’s past innovation performance and/or the average innovation performance of peer firms, further innovation performance decrease would first increase and then decrease the firm’s alliance knowledge search intensity. Moreover, a firm with a larger knowledge stock would conduct more alliance knowledge search to respond to innovation performance decrease than a firm with a smaller knowledge stock. Second, I examine how alliance knowledge leverage influence firm innovation. I argue that alliance knowledge leveraging can contribute more to firm innovation, if the firm can establish a balance between exploration, which is captured by terms such as search, variation, risk-taking, and experimentation, and exploitation, which is defined as items regarding experiential refinement and reusing existing knowledge. I propose that balancing exploration and exploitation within a single domain (e.g., search moderately explorative alliance knowledge) generates great managerial costs. However, firms can balance exploration and exploitation across domains: they can leverage explorative knowledge through exploitative alliances, such as repeated partnerships and strong ties. I test related hypotheses using longitudinal data from the U.S. biopharmaceutical industry. Results of data analysis generally support the hypotheses.

Taiwan DRAM industry emerged on OEM basis, i.e. foundry manufactures based upon the technology authorized by the foreign owner. With the expansion of capacity, Taiwan DRAM industry has gradually increased its global market share. In particular, only those market players with 12¡¨foundry, which requires hefty capital investment and can significantly increases capacity, are able to compete in the market. The financial tsunami started in 2008, however, impacted severely on the global economy. DRAM industry could not immune from this, and the collapse was unprecedented. Majority of market players were suffering losses, and unable to afford the migration of manufacturing process. Taiwan players used to borrow to expand capacity. Four major Taiwan DRAM players carry an aggregate debt of TWD300 billion. Taiwan DRAM industry is almost destroyed by the high leverage during the financial tsunami. Facing the unprecedented difficulty of DRAM industry, Taiwan government raised an industry re-engineering (or consolidation, whichever is appropriate) proposal with an aim to enhance the competitiveness in the global market through changes in industry structure and business operation. Thanks to the industry recovery stemmed in the third quarter of 2009, DRAM price started rebounding. The financial difficulty of DRAM players was been resolved. The government¡¦s proposal for industry re-engineering was ended up with a failure.Taiwan DRAM players are still operating on OEM basis and lack of competitiveness in global market. Though Taiwan DRAM players have turned profitable, benefited from price rebound, it is still a question mark that these players can survive in the long run. As long as the structural problem remains unsolved, the industry players and the government will face the same issue again in future. When the next recession is coming, whether Taiwan players shall exit the market, or Taiwan government shall step in? Whether the industry shall go through a consolidation? This paper will present the migration of DRAM industry life cycle, change of business model, strategic alliance, and industry trend in future, analyze on business strategies adopted by Taiwan DRAM players under the competitive environment. Hopefully, this paper could provide a reference as to the development of business strategy for Taiwan DRAM players.

Abstract The main purpose of this research & analysis report is to suggest a working model between a world leading connector distribution firm and a world leading connector manufacturer firm that will guide them to improved sales performance, increased profitability, and higher levels of customer satisfaction. However, a lack of trust and commitment is keeping them from accomplishing these outcomes. Without trust, there is no commitment. Without commitment, there can be no meaningful change. The method of this research is to first analyze the theories developed in the past for working partnership between distribution firms and manufacturer firms and then, the empirical studies conducted for the same period of time. Among the theories and empirical studies, we focus on how to bond the relationship by using influence (or power), dependence, functional conflict, and cooperation. More specifically, these factors or variables are somewhat related to idiosyncratic investments and contractual terms which provide the two parties with the options to compare pros and cons of taking the next step for relationship bonding. Other ways that may affect their common interest are to form a strategic alliance or joint venture that will provide a competitive advantage for both companies to win the business in this highly competitive environment. At the end of this research, we use a case study to represent potential relationship issues that still go on in today¡¦s business environment which occurred decades ago. Then, we apply the theories and studies and provide suggestions to both leading connector distributor and manufacturer on how to strengthen working relationship in today¡¦s competitive business environment.

Considering the current National Health Insurance system and the status of finance, many hospitals and clinics are cooperating or doing strategic alliance to achieve economies of scale. Although strategic alliance is common in Western medicine hospitals/ clinics, few Chinese medicine clinics have been done this way. Therefore, this study would like to discuss the behaviors of Chinese medicine clinics to understand how to use strategic alliance and differentiated business models to disencumber crisis for existence. This study selects two Chinese medicine clinics using strategic alliance to conduct case studies. After comparing business models and the ways of strategic alliance between the two clinics, it have been founded that the differences from business models lead to the two clinics have different motivations and methods of strategic alliance. Finally, this study provides some suggestions based on case studies in order to be referred by other Chinese medicine clinics.