COMPETENCIES OF STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MANAGERS

Phuoc D. Nguyen

The performance, achievement, and success of a strategic alliance depend largely on the competence and quality of the team of experts and managers of the partners in the strategic alliance. The biggest barrier to achieving satisfactory results in a strategic alliance is the professionals and administrators of each partner who only take care of the interests of their partners. ASAP (nd) suggests competencies of strategic alliance managers, including context competencies; core competencies – alliance capabilities, specific skills development, and mastery; and corporate capability for collaboration; business and industry knowledge – business knowledge and industry knowledge; and company-specific competencies. Because strategic alliance professionals work in a multicultural environment and a diverse workforce. It is suggested to complement ASAP’s competencies of strategic alliance managers, including vision, partnering, cooperation, decisiveness, social flexibility, flexibility and resilience, management control, systems thinking, creative thinking, conceptual thinking, critical thinking, strategic thinking, leading change, integrity, continual learning, accountability, leveraging diversity, developing others, external awareness, tolerance of ambiguity, emotional resilience and sensitivity, self-awareness, self-confidence, stress management, adaptability, collaboration, emotional intelligence, open-minded, and transformation.

Zoogah and Peng (2010) defined structural competencies refer to competencies that enable alliance managers to fit effectively within the specific alliance structures. Functional competencies enable partners to achieve their fundamental objectives for forming alliances which include business drivers such as profitability, learning, and cost reduction. The organizational structure of a strategic alliance is flexible and varies according to the strategic goals of each period, this structure requires a structural competence of alliance managers to adapt to the alliance organizational structure and aims to implement their functional competence to achieve the strategic objectives of the alliance.

One way to think about leadership issues in strategic alliances involves aligning disparate leadership skills and interests into a successful partnership. Successful strategic alliances involve two or more leaders who have relatively expansive power and authority over their host organization but relatively constrained power and authority over a strategic alliance (Judge and Ryman, 2001, p. 73). Leadership, power, and authority issues in a strategic alliance are very sensitive. Every alliance regulated power, authority, responsibility, and code of conduct; but these regulations’ implementation is slow and has barriers because the alliance’s leaders, managers, and professionals have always asked their superiors from the parent company to implement or obey the order of the assignee.