Travel Reference
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collaboration, ultimately, is an emergent process. Wood and Gray (1991: 146) advanced the
debate further in advocating collaboration occurring as when a 'group of autonomous stake-
holders of a problem domain engage in an interactive process, using shared rules, norms, and
structures, to act or decide on issues related to that domain'. Although somewhat generic in
nature, this is the defi nition to be used in this chapter as it provides suffi cient breadth for the
inclusion of variants to be subsumed within.
Perhaps more signifi cant than a defi nition of collaboration, is that of collaborative advantage
which has been described as when 'something unusually creative is produced - perhaps an
objective is met - which no organization could have produced on its own and when each
organization, through the collaboration, is able to achieve its own objectives better than it could
alone' (Huxham 1993: 603). Hence, rather than focusing on the process of collaboration,
collaborative advantage focuses on the synergistic outcomes of collaboration in that organizations
that fail to demonstrate competitive advantage independently may be able through collaboration
to achieve collaborative advantage which, in turn, then potentially leads to a competitive
advantage.
This chapter, therefore, seeks to synthesize the theoretical explanations that underpin our
understanding of collaboration, clarify the different types of collaboration that exist in the
context of marketing, and identify those criteria that contribute to collaborative success.
To illustrate the above, the chapter includes a case study on international airline alliances. The
chapter concludes by suggesting that although not always an easy strategic choice, collaboration
is particularly relevant in times of market turbulence despite its dynamic and emergent,
rather than more predictable and prescriptive, characteristics. The following section provides a
brief overview of collaboration in the context of international airline alliances. The section
that follows then provides a thorough introduction to the various theoretical approaches that
underpin our understanding of collaboration and which serve as a vehicle to understand the
complexities of international airline collaboration in the second half of the chapter.
Collaboration and international airline alliances
Defi ned as a an important form of collaboration between two or more organizations (Zhang
and Zhang 2006), a strategic alliance enables 'fi rms to achieve increased economies of scale, and
scope through joint operations, asset specialization, knowledge acquisition, and access to
resources' (Oum
et al
. 2004: 844). The adoption of such a strategy is widely believed to contribute
to enhanced profi tability gains for the fi rm due to greater levels of effi ciency and a strong and
strengthened competitive position. Consistent with the broader defi nition of collaboration,
those partnering in strategic alliances remain separate entities and retain their decision-making
autonomy with fi rms interacting with their 'social environments' to secure scarce resources
(Pfeffer and Salancik 1978), resources which more often than not include access to key markets.
Strategic alliances are highly prevalent in network-oriented industries such as shipping,
telecommunications and logistics with international air travel that sector within the wider
tourism industry which has perhaps most fully embraced collaboration in a strategic sense over
the past two decades (Holtbrügge, Wilson and Berg 2006; Goertz and Shapiro 2012).
Notwithstanding, international airline alliances have served as a rich area of research scrutiny
with a number of studies exploring the various dimensions of collaboration in this domain
including the forms and extent of collaboration between partners (Mountford and Tacoun
2004), the impact of alliances on competition (Wang
et al
. 2004), policy and consumer issues
(Gudmundsson 1999) and the impact on productivity and profi tability (Oum
et al
. 2000) and
human resource management (Holtbrügge
et al
. 2006).
