Strategic Motives for UK International Alliance Formation

Over the past two decades the incidence of strategic alliance formation has accelerated (Ghemawat et al., 1986; Glaister and Buckley, 1994; Hergert and Morris, 1988). Traditionally strategic alliances were used by multinational companies as a vehicle to enter the markets of developing countries that enforced restrictive conditions on foreign investment (Hood and Young, 1979). More recently firms in developed market economies have been increasingly willing to participate in cooperative ventures often with their direct competitors. The momentum for this has come from the firms themselves, which have voluntarily adopted alliances as a strategic option in response to changing market conditions rather than in compliance to exogenously enforced rules (Harrigan, 1988; Vonortas, 1990).