Strategic alliances have proliferated apace in recent decades, reflecting their distinct potential for aiding business and other organizations to compete better in an increasingly complex world. Briefly, strategic alliances are voluntary agreements between two or more organizations to cooperatively pursue their mutual strategic objectives. In business, where these alliances continue to flourish, the partner firms remain independent entities even as they may be actual or potential competitors. The goal is to improve their respective competitive performance and to create value by bringing together the distinctive resources and capabilities of separate firms. At the same time, it must be appreciated that the management of alliances connotes certain special complexities that are not present in managing single organizations, and carries with it certain distinctive risks. The formation, operation, and outcome stages of alliance development, as well as the interpartner dynamics concerning cooperation, resources, trust, risk, control, and so on, are unique in many ways. Strategic alliances also tend to take a variety of forms, so it is necessary to be clear about the nature of these entities. They cover the gamut from buyer-supplier arrangements, joint R&D, manufacturing, and marketing, to joint ventures that could be cross-border, public-private, multipartner, etc., with each type having different issues of governance and interpartner management.
Migration diplomacy in the Gulf – non-state actors, cross-border mobility, and the United Arab Emirates
