85 p.The primary objective of this dissertation is to, identify strategic alliances as a key strategy in the globalization initiative of emerging Asian automobile companies and develop a comprehensive road-map for forming these strategic alliances. The aim of this dissertation is to design a roadmap for Asian automobile companies to form strategic alliances through an enhanced understanding of global alliances in the light of the available theoretical literature and case studies. It has been attempted in this thesis to create a more comprehensive framework for specifically managing an alliance, as it would be characterized in a typical alliance of an Asian company with a western or a Japanese counterpart. By employing soft systems methodology, a as close to reality as possible problem scenario has been created and which has later been tried to be solved by using lessons from the theoretical frameworks and the case studies. The roadmap suggests 5 distinct stages for the strategic alliance which includes exploring the opportunities, partner selection; deciding the type of strategic alliance, design phase and alliance management.Master of Science (Computer Integrated Manufacturing
