Balanced Assessment of the Business Partner’s Potential: Three-step Selection Procedure for the Sustainable Development of the Strategic Alliance

Negotiating a strategic alliance agreement is one of the essential determinants of the success of the entire agreement, and it is also the logical conclusion of the whole building process of the strategic alliance. At the same time, already at this step there is the relationships building process between partners and the need to further maintaining of the alliance. Therefore, a special attention should be paid to the negotiating process of a strategic agreement, conditioning the effectiveness of alliance management in the future as well as the scope and quality of relations between the allies. In fact in this phase of the strategic agreement takes place establishing the common strategy, which in turn determines the friendly start of the future cooperation. The aim of this study is to identify the key factors that determine building and sustaining friendly relations between enterprises and at the same time determine the success of the whole alliance. Considerations were based on the analysis of literature describing the theoretical framework of strategic alliances creation as well as business practices in this area. This allowed to propose a three-step process of selecting the potential company to the alliance, taking into account the profile analysis of the future ally, assessment of its resources and cultural and strategic fit. These issues make possible to ensure the sustainable development of the planned alliance and the success of partners companies. The selection and negotiations process is crucial in maintaining lasting relationships with the allies. It should be foreseen whether the planned cooperation will not hinder or even prevent the alliance continuation in the future, or will cause unwillingness to enter into other cooperative agreements because of the mismatch of strategic partners or excessive cultural differences, and thus ineffective functioning of the alliance in the future.