International collaboration and bidding through the high technology defence industry: a technical note

The central aim of this paper is to link the competitive performance of small defence firms to their ability to adapt to changes in the Ministry of Defence procurement process favouring more European collaboration. The paper draws upon an extensive research study focused on small, high technology defence firms in the UK. The empirical analysis on the ability to create and sustain competitive advantages focuses on strategic determinants, and those inter-organisational variables that influence the performance of small firms in tendering for defence sub-contracts on major European offset programmes. The theoretical underpinnings of the study are based on a strategic positioning approach to bidding, which is underpinned by the positioning school of strategy that grew out of Porter’s conceptual work on competition, a major theme of which is the proposed relationship between industry structure, strategy and performance. The authors’ methodology was to use percentage success rate as a measure of success for the period 1998 through to mid-1999.