Bachelor Student Prize Winner

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2020 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Marc Mertens

 School of Business and Economics | Bachelor International Business

"Under Pressure: Implications of a Competitive Shock on Alliance Portfolio Diversity"

Marc's elevator pitch 
What would you do as a corporate executive if the position of your competitors improves overnight? This is not a hypothetical scenario. Competitive external shocks occur frequently, and one way managers can respond is through strategic alliances. Therefore, the resulting alliance activity will impact the composition, and more specifically the diversity, of companies' alliance portfolios. A natural experiment that was created by the ASEAN–India Free Trade Agreement reveals that rising cost-pressures and future uncertainty make simple, homogenous portfolios more attractive. Managers who utilize this finding can pre-empt their rivals, devise appropriate contingency plans, and thus create a sustained competitive advantage.