在現在這個競爭且變動十分劇烈的環境中，企業常常藉由策略聯盟來獲得所需要的技術或資源，來提高公司效率並加強其競爭地位。各個公司在組織策略聯盟的第一部，就是選擇一個適合的聯盟夥伴。在過去的研究中我們知道，在選擇策略聯盟夥伴的時候，公司常常會考慮到此對象是否能夠提供所需的資源與技術，以達到公司組成策略聯盟的目的，同時，對聯盟夥伴的熟悉與信賴程度也是公司非常重視的一環。但與此同時，我們卻仍可以在新聞中看到許多公司選擇與同產業的其他公司合作，對於身處同產業的直接競爭者來說，與對手聯盟可能會有很大的知識外溢風險，失去重要的核心知識或技術很可能會讓公司在產業中失去競爭地位。我們想要探討的問題是，在面臨這麼高的風險之下，公司為何還要選擇與競爭者合作，並了解其中是否有什麼利益是來自於這種同產業的競爭關係。
此外，除了聯盟夥伴所能提供的資源之外，我們也想要探討，在不同的聯盟型態之下，公司是否對於選擇聯盟夥伴會有不同的想法。我們從三個角度去分類不同的聯盟形態：整個聯盟，目標公司以及不同功能的聯盟。從整個聯盟的角度，我們將聯盟分為規模聯盟(Scale alliance)與鏈式聯盟(Link alliance)兩種。而從目標公司的角度，聯盟可分為探究性的(Explorative)與利用性的(Exploitative)兩種。最後，則是以研發、製造以及行銷三種不同的聯盟功能分類。
在本研究中，我們將首先探討公司與競爭者合作的優劣，然後進一步的分析各種不同聯盟形態的特性，並用此來推估在哪種情況下目標公司比較可能與競爭者做聯盟。本研究的資料來源為次級資料，我們以全球前五大汽車公司的聯盟案例為研究對象。實證的結果顯示，重視規模經濟效果的規模聯盟及利用性聯盟與競爭者合作的比例明顯高於鏈式聯盟及探究性聯盟。而在功能聯盟方面，製造聯盟與競爭者合作的比例明顯高於其他兩者，但研發與行銷聯盟之間並無顯著差異。

Nowadays, the business world is more competitive and change more rapidly, to face this kind of severe situation, firms often chose strategic alliances to enhance the operational efficiency. And the first step of forming strategic alliance is to select an appropriate partner. From the prior research, we knew that firms usually concerned about whether the partners had the resources or knowledge they need. In addition, trust and reliability of the partners are also very important factors that firms need to consider about. But talking about competitors, it often means that they are competitive in the same industry, and try to get a higher competitive position from each other. To cooperate with competitors could take firms into a risky situation of losing critical knowledge and further losing their competitive advantage. Even it is a risky activity, we still can see there are many firms do strategic alliances with firms in the same industry, the first question of this study is to figure out why firms want to cooperate with competitors.
Besides, we also want to know that whether the different alliance types could also affect partner selection decision of a firm. We classified alliance types from three aspects: the whole alliance (link verse scale), focal firm (exploitative verse explorative) and alliance functions (R&D, manufacturing and marketing). We analyzed the characteristics of alliance types and speculate how these characteristics affect the partner selection of firms.
We used secondary data to do empirical tests, our sample came from the alliance events of world’s top 5 car firms. The results show that in scale alliances and exploitative alliances, firms are more likely to ally with competitors than in link alliances and explorative alliances. In the functional alliances, the proportion of competitive alliance in manufacturing alliances is higher than other two alliance types, but there is no significant difference between R&D alliances and marketing alliances.

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