Development of a general collaboration model — Basis for the establishment of a collaboration compass

With the speed up of globalization and its consequent increased competition, companies are suggested to collaborate in networks for their long-term success. In this work, a general collaboration model is constructed, which aims to provide a holistic insight into collaboration and shed some light on the theory of collaboration management. Different dimensions, including collaboration life-cycle, endogenous elements and exogenous elements, are listed out for the interpretation here. To go into detail, the collaboration life-cycle is further divided into six stages. Moreover, based on the social relational theory, endogenous factors are clustered into motivation, structure, components and management, while exogenous factors are represented by the perspectives of potential partners, market and society. With the proposed model, detailed information can be collected for the strategic analysis and in the end lead to a sound collaboration strategy.