This thesis is an exploratory study of international cooperative development programs(international strategic alliances) in the aircraft manufacturing industry from a perspective of technologically inferior firms that try to acquire advanced technology and enter the international market. Focusing on the strategic alliances involving both technologically advanced and inferior firms, we examine how the partner capability composition, objectives of the strategic alliances, and government policy affected the performance of such alliances.
Research questions are as follows:
1) What is the most effective combination between partner capability composition and objectives of the strategic alliance in the aircraft manufacturing industry?
2) How do the internal market size and government policy influence the performance of the international cooperative development programs (international strategic alliances)?
We investigated 18 cases of such strategic alliances in the aircraft manufacturing and aircraft engine industry. The research results are as follows.
First, when the strategic alliance objectives were different between alliance partners and the partners' capabilities were uneven (i.e., unbalanced), an international cooperative development program showed a high performance. On the other hand, when a strategic alliance had similar strategic objectives between partners and also a similar capability composition, the performance was low. Our research also indicates that a consistent government policy and a large internal market made a strategic alliance more effective.
From the research, we can infer some managerial implications.
First, a technologically inferior firm needs to choose an international cooperative development program with an unbalanced composition of partner capabilities and different strategic objectives of the partners. Such a program can reduce partners' opportunistic behaviors and conflicts in pursuing their objectives.
The research outcome also shows that (a) an integrated decision making entity is necessary to resolve problems at the early development stage, (b) a subsystem is necessary to obtain advanced technology from the technologically advanced partner that was usually restricting the transfer of its core technology, and (c) a technologically inferior firm must become a learning organization in order to be able to absorb the advanced technology more effectively.
