問13
頻出度★★★
それぞれの企業が保有する経営資源を補完することを目的とした, 企業間での事業の連携, 提携や協調行動を表すものはどれか。
平成23年度 特別試験 ITパスポート試験 問13
ストラテジ系経営戦略マネジメント › 経営戦略手法
This question's explanation and your answers so far.
解説
問 13
Incorrectア
M&A (Merger & Acquisition) is the general term for mergers and acquisitions: acquiring another company's shares or business in order to take control of it, and then integrating that company into one's own company or making it a subsidiary. It may look as if it overlaps with the question in that the purpose is to obtain management resources, but in an M&A the other company loses its independence, management control moves to one side, and the two become a single decision-making body. What the question asks for is “linkage, partnership, and cooperative action” in which independent companies join hands as equals, so M&A, which means control and integration through capital, does not fit that description. The standard way to tell an alliance from an M&A is to ask whether independence is kept or lost.
Incorrectイ
Outsourcing means entrusting part or all of one's own operations, such as information system operation, a call center, or payroll calculation, to an outside specialist provider. It is a means of procuring from outside the functions a company does not have, so that management resources can be concentrated on core operations, and the relationship between the companies is that of client and contractor, that is, a contractual relationship of placing and accepting orders. It is not an equal cooperative action in which both sides bring resources together and complement each other, but a one-way relationship in which one side puts work out and the other takes it on in return for payment, and in this respect it differs from the description in the question. It is therefore wrong.
- ウ
正解 The correct answer is ウ. An alliance is a linkage, partnership, and cooperative relationship between companies in which several firms join hands while each remains an independent company, providing one another with the management resources they possess so as to make up for each other's weaknesses. In Japanese it is also called 企業提携 (corporate partnership) or 戦略的提携 (strategic alliance). The wording of the question is exactly this definition: (1) the actors are multiple companies, (2) the purpose is the mutual complementing of management resources, and (3) the action is linkage, partnership, and cooperative behavior. All three elements match the requirements of an alliance. Management resources here means people (personnel and know-how), things (production facilities and stores), money (funds), and information (technology, patents, customer data, and brands). For example, if a company that has excellent technology but no sales network teams up with a company that has a nationwide sales network but weak technical development, the two can make up for each other's missing resources in a short time. Concrete forms include business partnerships, technology partnerships, production partnerships, sales partnerships, joint research and development, setting up a joint venture through joint investment, and OEM, in which products are supplied under the partner's brand. The greatest feature of an alliance is that each company cooperates while keeping its own legal identity and management independence, and this is what makes it decisively different from M&A, which integrates the companies themselves. Compared with accumulating resources on its own, a company can fill gaps in a shorter time and at lower risk and can rearrange the relationship as the environment changes; on the other hand, decision making requires coordination with the partner, and there is a risk that the company's own technology and know-how will leak out. For these reasons, the term that expresses inter-company linkage, partnership, and cooperative action aimed at complementing management resources is alliance, and the correct answer is ウ.
Incorrectエ
Business portfolio management is a management technique in which the several businesses a company runs are classified and evaluated on axes such as market growth rate and market share, so as to decide which businesses should receive a concentrated allocation of funds and personnel and which businesses to withdraw from. The representative analysis tool is PPM (Product Portfolio Management), which places businesses in the four quadrants of star, cash cow, question mark, and dog. Its target is strictly the company's own internal business mix and the allocation of management resources, and it is not a word that expresses linkage or partnership with other companies, so it cannot be the answer to a question that asks about cooperative action between companies.
ここがポイント
- Definition of an alliance — a linkage, partnership, and cooperative relationship between companies formed for the purpose of mutually complementing management resources (technology, sales networks, brands, production facilities, personnel, funds, and so on) while each company keeps its independence. It takes forms such as business partnerships, technology partnerships, joint research and development, setting up a joint venture, and OEM. Compared with accumulating resources on its own, it lets a company fill gaps in a shorter time and at lower risk, but on the other hand it brings coordination costs with the partner and the risk of technology leakage.
- Telling apart the terms for relationships between companies — M&A takes control through merger or acquisition and integrates the companies into one (independence is lost); an alliance is an equal partnership in which independence is kept; outsourcing is a client-contractor relationship in which a company entrusts its own operations to an outside party. Note that business portfolio management alone is not about relationships between companies: it is a technique that uses tools such as PPM to optimize the allocation of management resources among the several businesses inside one's own company.
用語