Partnerships should aim to lower costs and risks, increase profits and allow partners to benefit from each other's experience and contacts. A study featured in The Economist in January 1999 showed how difficult partnership is. In 1998, two out of three mergers failed. Mergers mainly benefit the financial engineers who designed them. The problem is not one of the theoretical calculation of accounting profits.
Problems arise rather when the gains of the partnership come to be realised.
Experience shows that, more often than not, human factors are not sufficiently considered. People from different corporate cultures suddenly have to work together. Unfamiliar people enter the workplace, claiming their share and shaking up accepted power structures. They insist on being treated with respect as equal partners. Their new ideas and experience will often be perceived as a threat rather than an opportunity.