An inter-organizational cooperative arrangement designed to advance the long-term interests of all parties. Best described in terms of relationships, as distinct from a sequence of transactions, alliances are characterized by the trust and mutual commitment, and intensive exchange of information. They may be loose, as in trade association committee work, or close, as in a co-production network. All alliances are less formal than e.g., joint ventures, as alliances are not themselves corporate entities.
Published in Chapter:
Economic Development Alliances
Fred Young Phillips (Alliant International University, USA and Maastricht School of Management, The Netherlands)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 8
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-885-7.ch061
Abstract
Metropolitan and rural regions around the world compete to attract enterprises (private companies, NGOs, parastatals, and government agencies) that offer wellpaying jobs. Economic globalization and new technologies make necessary, and at the same time make possible, new strategies for economic development (ED). Increasingly, these new strategies involve intraregional and inter-regional alliances.