Strategic Alliances as Social Facts

"An absorbing account of strategic learning in a hi-tech sector. Written in an elegant and witty style, it opens the analysis to a wide audience. The case histories are likely to be quoted in management teaching and research for some time to come." Raymond Loveridge, Leverhulme Research Fellow, Said Business School, University of Oxford

"Mark de Rond provides an important new explanation of how strategic alliances develop. Unlike past explanations that focus on consensus or regulation, he addresses the contradictions and paradoxes that are inherent in strategic alliances and offers a dialectical model for dealing with them. This is an important contribution." Andrew H. Van de Ven, University of Minnesota

"Stated simply, Mark de Rondas book is a tour de force analysis of strategic alliances. Grounded in significant theoretical and empirical work, this book offers readers a masterfully written, intellectually rich assessment of alliances as an increasingly important way of competing in our globalizing world. This book will appeal both to those using alliances to increase their firmas performance and to researchers keen to refine the quality of the questions they pursue." R. Duane Ireland, W. David Robbins, Chair in Strategic Management, Robins School of Business, University of Richmond

"In this significant new book, Mark de Rond argues elegantly and convincingly that we need new theories of alliances which address the heterogeneity and idiosyncrasy of alliances. This is an important message which can apply to our understanding of business in general." John Child, Chair of Commerce, Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham

"This book provides a fascinating account of some of the social dynamics underlying alliances. Using rich case studies, Mark de Rond develops an original theoretical treatment of these complex phenomena. He seamlessly transcends multiple levels of analysis and grounds organizational actions in concrete decisions and behaviours of individuals within those organizations. While the primary focus of this book is on alliances, they are merely the foil for a much larger and more ambitious undertaking by the author to promote a shift away from monistic to pluralistic theoretical accounts. This is a welcome addition to what is becoming a growing social movement among organizational scholars. Given its pluralistic vein, this book is likely to be of interest to a wide range of scholars and observers of the social dynamics of organizational life." Ranjay Gulati, Michael L. Nemmers Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Organization, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

"Mark de Rond's display of the messiness of alliance life through a detailed and witty account of three strategic collaborations in the bio-pharmaceutical sector is highly effective and persuasive. By inviting us to give up the vein pursuit of simple theories, he challenges us, both scholars and practitioners, to grow up to the task of confronting the complexity of the real world and to take full responsibility for our own, necessarily fallible, choices." Hamid Bouchikhi, Professor of Strategy and Management, Director of the New Business Center, ESSEC Business School, Paris