Strategic alliances and performance in a belgian industrial context
This study attempts to identify the main foundations of competitiveness, an ambiguous and intuitive challenge which can be appreciated by different means. Our choice was to develop an empirical approach, from a microeconomic point of view, based on qualitative appreciations of the concerned firms. We hope that the obtained results lead us to better understand the link between performance and strategic choices in the medium and long term and to explain more precisely how to create and maintain business success in an industrial context.
Data/Methods :
Data :
This approach consists in an empirical survey, based on a questionnaire sent to the General Managers of the biggest manufacturing companies in Belgium. We obtained 247 exploitable responses, which cover 14.3 % of the referenced population. We hope that this large database can conduct to robust and representative results, even if they are only limited to a country and to a specific observation period.
Methodology :
A fully integrated approach, combining different successive and imbricated statistical methods, is firstly based on a descriptive analysis, in order to identify general variables related to the nature of the activity, the size of the firm, its autonomy in terms of decision-making, the export dynamism, the characteristics of products portfolio, the evolution of direct environment, the level and intensity of current and future competition related to market structures, the internal and external communication policy, the use of an information system, the position in terms of labor and capital costs,… but also reflecting the choice and the directions of growth strategies and firm’s appreciations about its own competitive position and the main ways that can allow to reach better performance.
On this base, cross tables lead us to select the more significative factors for a better understanding of the global basic foundations of competitiveness linked with the main managerial options.
Furtherly, to explicit these preliminary results, we choose an original multidimensional approach, namely a factorial analysis and a hierarchical classification, which help us to progress towards more significative observations, resumed below.
Results
The factorial analysis pintpoints as main dimensions of business success five areas : relational and cooperation strategies (joint ventures, participations, alliances, mergers, partnerships,…), commercial dynamism (flexibility in the market orientation and the building of an equilibrated and evolutive products portfolio may also authorize, via innovation, firms to “play alone”), domination coming from market share and leadership position, competitivity based on internal cost reduction by means of delocalization and/or sub-contracting, and industrial activity spread (firm diversification and products differentiation).
Finally, a hierarchical classification leads us to establish a typology of the firms making up our sample, showing that the most important factor of differentiation is clearly linked with the use (or not) of strategic alliances in large measure. This last result shows the role of relational and “non competitive” strategies in order to obtain –and maintain- business success in an industrial context.