Section Twobecause of the integrated design, production, and marketing
processes required for today’s short product development
cycles, the pace of the dependent company’s decline may
quicken.^43
Lei and Slocum have concluded that the importance of
domestic manufacturing may have been underestimated. For
example, companies that have licensed foreign companies to
use their manufacturing technologies have placed themselves
at future disadvantage. As Lei and Slocum pointed out, “As
technology becomes a greater source of competitive
advantage, licensing decisions can often radically shift the
firm’s competitive posture in that industry.”^44
Human resource managers need to know how to
decrease the likelihood of these undesirable outcomes.
Measures that may prevent alliances from working to the
eventual disadvantage of the company include:
(1) understanding the real aspirations of the alliance partner,
(2) keeping in mind the original purposes of the alliance so that
objectives are not redefined to the company’s disadvantage,
(3) avoiding a false sense assurance provided by legal control
since the real key is knowledge transfer, and (4) keeping
alliance interface managers in place over long periods of time
so that subtle nuances are understood.^45 Because the latter is
often in opposition to the length of job rotation cycles in