CASE: TNO-HOOGENDOORN

By:

Arjun Vijayakumar (BL.BU.P2MBA19016)

Nithin Sharma (BLBU.P2MBA19040)

Questions

1. Explain why TNO and Hoogendoorn continued the alliance, despite dissatisfactory
economic performance.
Answer: TNO and Hoogendoorn continued the alliance as TNO complied this new
arrangement where it deemed the long-term relationship with Hoogendoorn. more
important than immediate financial returns. Sensiplant is a product that is ready to be
launched commercially and TNO was under impression that Version 1.2 was selling
successfully after TNO listened to the customer’s feedbacks. But, confronted with market
uncertainties, Hoogendoorn procrastinated about signing it. So, TNO and Hoogendoorn
continued the alliance and developed a plan to launch Sensiplant Version 1.3. But finally,
TNO and Hoogendoorn decided to dissolve the alliance and both parties incurred their
financial losses.
It shows that they don’t have proper commitment towards what they want to achieve. The
management of both alliances don’t have proper coordination and monitoring of activities.
They have to follow the approaches of alliance management, such as relational governance,
trust, conflict management and response strategies. So, that they could overcome all their
problems.

2. Describe the alliance’s development. How did alliance management affect the partner
interaction pattern?
Answer: In order to have alliance development, the firms must be able to tackle any
situation by knowing what the problem is, lists down the set of solutions, choose the
appropriate one and implement it. It is important that we must be aware of the decisions we
chose, the underlying principles, guidelines and information that may lead to taking
decisions.
For the effect with the partner interaction pattern is response strategies. It focuses on
relationship reactions that managers use to resolve dissatisfying solutions. When the
Sensiplant was introduced a negative feedback was given which resulted in the product
failure and it became closed. But what TNO did was, they understood the customer
feedback and released the next version which Version 1.2 which became successful. Here we
can see an interaction pattern being formed which the management must have followed it
from the beginning. But later we see that they developed Version 1.3 and focused on
imposing long term relationship rather than financial returns, which led to dissolve in their
alliance.