Identifying and Explaining Key Enabling Factors to Implement a Successful Strategic Alliance .

This study intends to introduce and develop an appropriate conceptual model in which different key enabling factors and variables for successful implementation of partnership projects from different theoretical perspectives are taken into account and their role in enhancing the performance of a strategic partnership is explained. To do so, this study seeks to answer the following two questions: 1) Given the different theoretical perspectives available in the literature on strategic partnerships, what are the key enabling factors for implementation of successful strategic partnership? 2) What is an appropriate causal model of identified key enablers which is capable of properly explaining the performance of a strategic partnership? 

  The present study is applied in nature and it is a descriptive research in terms of data collection and analysis. It is also considered as a field study in terms of its questionnaire approach. Moreover, because the present study investigates the simultaneous relationship among several variables, it is a descriptive correlational and causal research. In this study, a questionnaire was used to collect data distributed to companies affiliated with the Air Force Organization (affiliated to the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Support). The statistical population of the study includes all the experts 
(managers, supervisors and senior experts with at least three years of experience) of the companies affiliated with the AEOI. Finally, 79 completed questionnaires were received and analyzed and 112 strategic partnerships in the related industries were identified.

 The empowering factors identified in this study (ability to manage the partnership, alignment of goals and motivations, appropriateness of participation resources, and social capital of partnership) are able to collectively explain about 72% of the performance of a strategic partnership, which is considered as a desirable outcome. On the other hand, the Q2 coefficient of the Stone-Geyser coefficient was reported at 0.42 for partnership performance, indicating that the predictive power of the proposed model is about 42%, which is also desirable. Therefore, it can be concluded that the fitness of the structural part of this model is acceptable.

 Based on the proposed model of the present research, two companies must first take steps to idjust and develop the four porposed empowering factors in order to implement a successful strategic partnership. The measurement scales and indices presented in this study can also be considered as a good reference for managers of the two partner companies in order to comprehensively assess their inclination before starting a strategic partnership.