ABSTRACT
To maintain effective alliances, alliance partners must evaluate alliance performance continuously; monitoring provides the firms with the necessary information to take appropriate actions, whether doing nothing, adapting the alliance design and management or terminating the relationship. This chapter details on the complexities associated with alliance performance (assessment), including the distinction between intentional and emergent outcomes, between tangible and intangible outcomes, and private and common outcomes. The chapter also presents six alliance performance approaches—economic, strategic, operational, learning, relational and responsible—and indicates that alliance performance assessment encompassed the building and deployment of a comprehensive performance metric system aligned with the unique alliance characteristics. Alliance performance, the value it generates and the direct and indirect benefits for individual partners are difficult to capture, thus the chapter concludes by presenting a four-step approach to help alliance managers to articulate, explicate and quantify objectives in support of alliance adaptations.
