| Course | BUSI 616 Total Quality Management (BUSI616) |
|---|---|
| Module/Week | 2 |
| Assignment | Strategic Partners and Alliances |
| Paper type | Short APA paper on partners, alliances and culture |
| Length | about 523 words, 2 double-spaced pages plus title page and references. Course guide: approximately 500 words with a title page and reference list in current APA format, citing at least 2 scholarly articles for a total of 3 references, with biblical integration |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| Points | 50 |
| School | Liberty University Online |
| Program | MBA |
| Where it sits | Module/Week 2 in Liberty's published BUSI 616 course guide; current sections can differ |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BUSI 616 Week 2
Who the Laboratory Depends On: Strategic Partners, Alliances and a Clan Culture at a Dental Laboratory
[Student Name]
School of Business, Liberty University
BUSI 616: Total Quality Management
Strategic Partners and Alliances
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The dental laboratory, its partners and its culture are composites standing in for the organization a student selects; the textbook, Scripture and studies cited are real, and the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for BUSI 616.
Who the Laboratory Depends On: Strategic Partners, Alliances and a Clan Culture at a Dental Laboratory
Strategic Partners
Shenandoah Dental Arts, the composite Harrisonburg laboratory from Module/Week 1, depends on four partners whose work shapes its crown remake rate. Goetsch and Davis (2016) treat suppliers and customers as part of the quality system rather than outsiders to it, and that view fits a laboratory whose product begins in a dentist's chair. A crown can be no better than the scan it was designed from or the ceramic it was milled from, so the practices and the materials supplier are as much a part of the remake problem as any bench in the building.
| Partner | What the partner provides | What the laboratory provides |
|---|---|---|
| About 400 dental practices | Prescriptions, scans or impressions, patient shade information | Crowns, bridges and dentures; case consultation |
| Intraoral scanner platform | A portal that sends digital scans directly to the laboratory | A listed laboratory for the platform's dentists |
| Ceramic materials supplier | Zirconia and lithium disilicate blocks, technical training | Committed annual volume |
| Overflow design studio | Crown designs during peak weeks | Design files and quality standards |
Alliances
Two of these relationships are formal alliances. The scanner portal link lets dentists send scans without impressions or couriers, and the laboratory agreed to meet the platform's file and turnaround standards in exchange for a listing. The materials agreement trades a committed volume for price stability and on-site training. Dyer and Singh (1998) argued that alliances earn returns no firm could earn alone through relation-specific assets, knowledge-sharing routines, complementary resources and effective governance. The scanner link is a relation-specific asset: it is worth far more inside the partnership than outside it. Governance in both alliances is light: a one-page agreement and an annual review call. That suits a small firm, but it means neither partner has committed to share the data that would show how scans and materials contribute to remakes, the knowledge-sharing routine Dyer and Singh considered a main source of joint advantage.
Organizational Culture
Shenandoah is a second-generation family business in which the owner knows every technician, mistakes are discussed informally and senior technicians mentor new hires. In the competing values framework, that profile is a clan culture. Pooling 84 studies, Hartnell et al. (2011) reported that clan cultures were positively associated with effectiveness criteria, including employee attitudes, though the relationships did not always follow the framework's predictions. The same meta-analysis linked market cultures, which emphasize measurable goals and competition, more strongly to operational and financial results. Shenandoah shows few market traits: it sets no remake targets, and technicians' pay does not depend on first-time fit.
How Culture Affects the Partners
The clan culture helps with dentists, who know the technicians by name and call them directly about difficult cases. That familiarity, built over years of phone calls and visits to practices, explains why the laboratory has kept many practices for more than a decade despite cheaper competitors, and why dentists forgive an occasional remake. It also helps the overflow design studio, whose designers were trained at Shenandoah and share its standards informally. It hinders data-driven alliances: the laboratory records remakes on paper slips, so it cannot share remake reasons with the scanner platform or the materials supplier, both of which could help reduce them. The prophet frames partnership as a question: can two travel side by side if they have not first arranged to meet (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Amos 3:3)? Agreement with partners requires shared facts, and the laboratory's warmth must be matched by shared measurement. Keeping the clan culture's loyalty while adding a little of the market culture's discipline, a monthly remake report shared with each alliance partner, would let the partners walk the same road toward fewer remakes.
References
Dyer, J. H., & Singh, H. (1998). The relational view: Cooperative strategy and sources of interorganizational competitive advantage. Academy of Management Review, 23(4), 660-679. https://doi.org/10.2307/259056
English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2016). Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to total quality (8th ed.). Pearson.
Hartnell, C. A., Ou, A. Y., & Kinicki, A. (2011). Organizational culture and organizational effectiveness: A meta-analytic investigation of the competing values framework's theoretical suppositions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(4), 677-694. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021987
What the BUSI 616 Week 2 instructions ask
Chapters 4 to 6 of Goetsch and Davis, three presentations and a website make up the Module/Week 2 reading, and Discussion Board Forum 2 is due alongside this paper. The guide frames Strategic Partners and Alliances as a set of questions about the student's own selected organization: identify its strategic partners, describe the alliances it has formed, name its organizational culture and explain how that culture affects its partners or alliances. Answers should run to approximately 500 words. As with every BUSI 616 paper, the student brings in two scholarly articles in addition to the textbook, for three references, integrates a biblical perspective and formats the title page, citations and reference page in current APA style. The worth is 50 points.
How this BUSI 616 Week 2 example is built
The paper puts the guide's four questions under four headings and answers them in order. A partner table lists four partners, what each provides and what the laboratory gives back. The alliance section describes two formal arrangements, a case-portal link with a scanner platform and a volume agreement with a materials supplier, and explains them through Dyer and Singh's sources of relational rent. The culture section applies the competing values framework, citing Hartnell, Ou and Kinicki's meta-analysis on how clan cultures relate to effectiveness. A final section shows how the laboratory's family-style culture builds trust with dentists but slows formal data sharing, and Scripture on agreement between partners closes the argument.
BUSI 616 Week 2 grading rubric: where the points go
This assignment is graded on whether every one of the guide's questions is answered clearly for the selected organization, with partners and alliances that are specific rather than generic categories. A strong paper names an identifiable culture type using a recognized framework, such as the competing values framework, and explains a cause-and-effect link between that culture and partner relationships. Scholarly evidence should support the analysis, not just define terms, and biblical integration should speak to how partners are treated. Length near 500 words, organization under clear headings, accurate APA citations and a correctly formatted title page and reference list account for the remaining points. Tie the analysis back to the quality problem from Week 1, since TQM treats suppliers and customers as part of the quality system.
BUSI 616 Week 2 help: mistakes that cost points
Papers often lose marks by listing "suppliers, customers and employees" as partners without naming who they are or what each contributes. Pick three or four partners that genuinely shape quality in your organization and say what flows each way. Separate partners from alliances: an alliance is a formal arrangement with shared commitments, while a partner may simply be an important supplier. When you classify culture, use a framework and give evidence from behavior, such as how decisions are made or how errors are handled. Answer the last question with a mechanism, not an adjective. Finally, link at least one partner to your Week 1 quality problem; graders reward papers that build a single TQM project across the eight modules.
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Other BUSI 616 weeks
- BUSI 616 Week 1: Deming vs. Crosby Philosophies
- BUSI 616 Week 3: Internal and External Customers
- BUSI 616 Week 4: Training Needs Analysis
- BUSI 616 Week 5: Quality Tool: Remake Pareto Chart
- BUSI 616 Week 6: PDCA Cycle for Open Margins
- BUSI 616 Week 7: Change Management Strategy
- BUSI 616 Week 8: TQM Presentation: First-Time Fit
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BUSI 616 Week 2 questions, answered
What is the BUSI 616 Strategic Partners and Alliances assignment?
A 50-point Module/Week 2 paper of about 500 words that identifies the selected organization's strategic partners and alliances, names its culture and explains how that culture affects its partners, with three APA references and biblical integration.
Where can I find a free BUSI 616 Week 2 sample paper?
This page holds a full BUSI 616 Week 2 paper on a dental laboratory's partners, its scanning and materials alliances and its clan culture, with a partner table and Scripture integration.
What is the difference between a strategic partner and a strategic alliance?
A strategic partner is any organization whose contribution shapes a firm's results, such as a key supplier; an alliance is a formal arrangement between organizations with shared goals, commitments and often shared investment.
What is a clan culture?
In the competing values framework, a clan culture is an internally focused, flexible culture that values collaboration, loyalty and employee development, often found in family-owned and smaller firms.
How does organizational culture affect strategic alliances?
Culture shapes how openly a firm shares information, how it handles disagreements and how quickly it decides, so it can build trust with partners or make formal coordination harder.
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