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Unit of study_

IBUS3101: International Business Alliances

The formation and implementation of successful global business strategies involves alliances with a range of stakeholders including international customers and suppliers, overseas agents, international franchisors and franchisees, international joint venture partners, and international merger relationships. The aim of this unit of study is to provide conceptual frameworks and evidence from practice that will develop an understanding of the motivations underlying international alliances, the alternative approaches to alliance formulation and development, and the problems involved in promoting effective alliance management. Major topics include the motivations for international business alliances, analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of different types of alliances, factors influencing the choice of alliance arrangements, alliance structure issues, partners selection and relationship management, the reasons why alliances succeed or fail, and the management of alliance processes.

Code IBUS3101
Academic unit International Business
Credit points 6
Prerequisites:
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Completion of at least 36 credit points of 1000-level units
Corequisites:
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None
Prohibitions:
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None

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

  • LO1. analyse the strategic issues faced by alliance partners, using the different theories covered in the unit and to develop well justified solutions to these issues
  • LO2. develop a contextual understanding of the institutional and market environment, and evaluate the resources and capabilities of the organisation in order to propose an alliance strategy
  • LO3. research the different or similar industries of the alliance partners to gain an understanding of the markets, and investigate the strategic objectives of the alliance partners in order to propose a real world alliance between the two firms from different countries
  • LO4. analyse real world alliances to understand their strategic significance and impact on value creation by parent firms.