Not by Strategic Partnerships Alone

Résumé du livre

In this paper we want to call against taking too far the recent fad for 'strategic partnerships' and correct the prevailing myth that Japanese firms primarily manage their network of external relations with strategic partnerships. We empirically show that at the macro level, i.e., when looking across a wide range of products and markets, their decisions and behaviors converge with those of their U.S. counterparts and follow rather a logic of managing a portfolio of relationships. We analyze data we collected in the US and Japanese automobile industries and segment our sample of 447 buyer-supplier relations into four cells, based upon the extent to which either party has made relations into four cells, based upon the extent to which either party has made investments specific to the relationship. Contrary to popular belief, Japanese and US automakers use a range of relationships to manage their supply chain. In particular, we find high ratio of market exchange relations in Japan and conversely a high ratio of strategic partnerships in the U.S. market. For each cell we then derive the typical environmental contingencies and draw the management profile of the best performers. We finally integrate these findings into a framework to help senior managers: (1) select the appropriate type of relationship given the external market and technology contingencies, (2) effectively manage each type of relationship, and thereby (3) avoid the two traps of under-designing some relationships (the typical problem of the 1980s) and over-designing others (the risk for the future as the partnership fad sweeps business circles).