Impaired integration in alliances: moving from chaos to harmony

Purpose Alliances have become prominent in the global economy. Firms enter alliances to enhance their competitive positioning. In practice, many partnerships fail to achieve their potential, either due to conflicting goals, divergent cultures, a lack of trust and/or shifts in the external environment. In this conceptual paper, the authors aim to demonstrate how friction leads to trade-offs and tensions that might impede the alliance’s ability to achieve its full potential. The authors conclude by discussing turnaround strategies to enhance alliance performance. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper draws on the extant alliance literature to develop a framework that will be helpful for alliance managers. The authors illustrate the usefulness of this framework through real-life cases. The examples highlight effective and ineffective ways of managing alliances. Findings The authors posit that there are four kinds of alliance states: destructive chaos, disruptive chaos, transient harmony and blissful harmony. The four states are a composition of friction that rises from various degrees of strategic congruence and relational harmony. Blissful harmony is the normatively ideal state to which firms should aspire. This is a state in which the partners are well aligned to achieve their strategic objectives. A key to any successful alliance is to manage the strategic and relational aspects of the relationship. Originality/value Although the alliance literature offers numerous frameworks, they do not directly address the issue of impaired integration. The authors believe that this is a key, underexplored avenue in alliance research and practice and this paper seeks to address this deficiency.