The 17 PROPAT Characteristics
- A willingness to change and take risks
- Acceptance of interdependence
- Trust
- Seeking absolute not relative advantage
- Long-term Commitment
- Capacity to learn
- Communication
- Coordination
- Flexibility
- Objective self assessment
- Active membership in social networks
- Awareness about alliances
- Ability to resolve conflict
- Patience
- People before structure
- Loyalty to existing members
- Thrift
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Successful business collaboration
Acceptance of interdependence
One of the main consequences of business collaboration is loss of independence. When firms collaborate to achieve mutually beneficial goals they must first acknowledge that each is dependent on the other (Spekman and Mohr 1994). Although legal independence may be maintained in some forms of business collaboration arrangements, limits on economic independence are usually inevitable and partners must be willing to forgo some individual discretion in decision making (Roessl 2005).
A decision to enter int some form of business collaboration is by default a decision in favour of interdependence and the acceptance of restrictions on one's own behaviour options. Therefore entrepreneurs contemplating business collaboration must feel comfortable with this interdependence and loss of autonomy. They must have full confidence that any loss of autonomy will be equitably compensated by the expected gains arising from the collaboration. Alliance partners must recognise that the advantages of interdependence arising from business collaboration provide benefits far greater than they could achieve individually (Cummings 1984).