Volume 21, Number 3; Article by Sankalp Chaturvedi, Ajai S Gaur; September, 2009
Sankalp Chaturvedi is Assistant Professor, Organisation and Management Group, Imperial College Business School, London, UK
Ajai S Gaur is Assistant Professor, Department of Management and Global Business, Rutgers Business School, Newark and New Brunswick, USA
Focusing on the 'soft' side of alliance management, Chaturvedi and Gaur contend that the outcome of an alliance depends on the motives of the firms entering into the alliance. While firms may enter into alliances with cooperative or competitive motives, if one of the partners has a competitive motive for entering into an alliance, the alliance is bound to fail. However, when both the parties involved have a cooperative motive, the success of the alliance will depend on the development of trust and commitment between the partners.
Building on the above conceptualisation, Chaturvedi and Gaur elaborate how trust and commitment develop during different phases in different types of alliances. The three alliance types discussed are joint ventures, minority equity and non-equity alliances. Trust and commitment are seen to have two components a rational part and an emotional part which develop differentially during the provisional, building and sacking periods of alliances. Overall, the framework suggests that the development of trust and commitment is a very intricate process, and has important implications for the success or failure of the alliance.
The study contributes to the strategic alliance and trust literatures. The study highlights the importance of entering into alliances with a cooperative motive, and the description of the lifespan of an alliance in terms of three periods from the point of view of trust and commitment development provides an alternate way to manage alliances stages. This model provides a novel way to look into trust development at the macro level in firms. The introduction of a temporal dimension into the development of trust and commitment can help in resolving many ambiguities in the current literature on trust and commitment in strategic alliances.
Reprint No 09301
