A method for partner selection of codevelopment alliances using individual and collaborative utilities

The success of a codevelopment alliance depends on the close cooperation between partners. Consideration of collaborative utility is very important for partner selection in the alliance formation, while it is neglected in the existing research. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method for partner selection of codevelopment alliances using individual and collaborative utilities. Firstly, a framework for partner selection of codevelopment alliances is presented. It describes two types of attributes, individual attributes and collaborative ones, as well as their measurements. According to the framework, a fuzzy multiple attribute decision-making (FMADM) approach is then proposed to integrate the assessment data of individual and collaborative utilities to achieve the final ranking of all candidate partners. Additionally, an example is used to illustrate the potential application of the proposed method. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.