Study of Motives of Indian Strategic Alliances

Abstract

Strategic Alliances (SAs) have been formed by firms to attain strategic objectives which alone firms were unable to secure. Typically, firms formed SAs to gain market share or to seek innovation and research and development capabilities form the partnering firm. In the extant literature, market seeking SAs have been viewed as defensive while innovation and research and development capabilities seeking SAs as an aggressive strategy. In this research, the authors conducted a study of 165 strategic alliances cases in the Indian business scenario to study the motives of SAs. This study classified SAs formed by the top 50 firms listed on India's National Stock Exchange (NSE) (NIFTY50 index) into different categories. Inferences and findings have been drawn using content analysis of the available dataset. It was observed that, out of the 165 unique cases of SAs, a substantial number of SAs could be classified as ‘business alliances' focusing on the market seeking from the alliance partner.