Consortium de Réalisation
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A consortium (plural: consortia) is an
association Association may refer to: *Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal *Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry *Voluntary associatio ...
of two or more
individuals An individual is that which exists as a distinct entity. Individuality (or self-hood) is the state or quality of being an individual; particularly (in the case of humans) of being a person unique from other people and possessing one's own need ...
,
companies A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of people, whether natural, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specific, declared go ...
,
organizations An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived from ...
or
government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is ...
s (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal. is a
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
word meaning "
partnership A partnership is an arrangement where parties, known as business partners, agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. The partners in a partnership may be individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments ...
", "association" or "society", and derives from ("shared in property"), itself from ("together") and ("fate").


Examples


Educational

The
Big Ten Academic Alliance The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA), formerly the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), is the academic consortium of the universities in the Big Ten Conference. The consortium was renamed on June 29, 2016. Member universities The Bi ...
in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic U.S.,
Claremont Colleges The Claremont Colleges (known colloquially as the 7Cs) are a consortium of seven private institutions of higher education located in Claremont, California, United States. They comprise five undergraduate colleges (the 5Cs)— Pomona College, Sc ...
consortium in Southern California,
Five College Consortium The Five College Consortium (often referred to as simply the Five Colleges) comprises four liberal arts colleges and one university in the Connecticut River Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts: Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount ...
in Massachusetts, and Consórcio Nacional Honda are among the oldest and most successful higher education consortia in the
World In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...
. The
Big Ten Academic Alliance The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA), formerly the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), is the academic consortium of the universities in the Big Ten Conference. The consortium was renamed on June 29, 2016. Member universities The Bi ...
, formerly known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, includes the members of the
Big Ten The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...
athletic conference. The participants in Five Colleges, Inc. are: Amherst College,
Hampshire College Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was opened in 1970 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mo ...
, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the
University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, ...
. Another example of a successful consortium is the Five Colleges of Ohio of Ohio: Oberlin College, Ohio Wesleyan University,
Kenyon College Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio. It was founded in 1824 by Philander Chase. Kenyon College is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. Kenyon has 1,708 undergraduates enrolled. Its 1,000-acre campus is ...
,
College of Wooster The College of Wooster is a private liberal arts college in Wooster, Ohio. Founded in 1866 by the Presbyterian Church as the University of Wooster, it has been officially non-sectarian since 1969 when ownership ties with the Presbyterian Church ...
and
Denison University Denison University is a private liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio. One of the earliest colleges established in the former Northwest Territory, Denison University was founded in 1831. The college was first called the Granville Literary and ...
. The aforementioned Claremont Consortium (known as the Claremont Colleges) consists of
Pomona College Pomona College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became t ...
, Claremont Graduate University, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College, and Keck Graduate Institute. These consortia have pooled the resources of their member colleges and the universities to share human and material assets as well as to link academic and administrative resources. An example of a non-profit consortium is the Appalachian College Association (ACA) located in Richmond, Kentucky. The association consists of 35 private liberal arts colleges and universities spread across the central Appalachian mountains in
Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...
,
North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...
,
Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
,
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
, and
West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the B ...
. Collectively these higher education institutions serve approximately 42,500 students. Six research universities in the region (
University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state ...
,
University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...
,
University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state ...
,
West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley, Potomac State Coll ...
,
University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...
, and
Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also has educational facilities in six re ...
) are affiliated with the ACA. These institutions assist the ACA in reviewing grant and fellowship applications, conducting workshops, and providing technical assistance. The ACA works to serve higher education in the rural regions of these five states.


Commercial

An example of a for-profit consortium is a group of banks that collaborate to make a loan—also known as a
syndicate A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies, corporations or entities formed to transact some specific business, to pursue or promote a shared interest. Etymology The word ''syndicate'' comes from the French word ''syndicat ...
. This type of loan is more commonly known as a syndicated loan. In England it is common for a consortium to buy out financially struggling football clubs in order to keep them out of liquidation.
Alyeska Pipeline Service Company The Alyeska consortium refers to the major oil companies that own and operate the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) through the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. History The Alaska corporation commonly known as Alyeska Pipeline Company was fou ...
, the company that built the
Trans-Alaska Pipeline System The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) is an oil transportation system spanning Alaska, including the trans-Alaska crude-oil pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is one o ...
in the 1970s, initially was a consortium of BP, ARCO, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Mobil,
Unocal Union Oil Company of California, and its holding company Unocal Corporation, together known as Unocal was a major petroleum explorer and marketer in the late 19th century, through the 20th century, and into the early 21st century. It was headqu ...
, and Koch Alaska Pipeline Company.


Aerospace


Airbus example

Airbus Industries was formed in 1970 as a consortium of aerospace manufacturers. The retention of production and engineering assets by the partner companies in effect made Airbus Industries a sales and marketing company. This arrangement led to inefficiencies due to the inherent conflicts of interest that the four partner companies faced; they were both shareholders of, and subcontractors to, the consortium. The companies collaborated on development of the Airbus range, but guarded the financial details of their own production activities and sought to maximize the transfer prices of their sub-assemblies. In 2001, EADS (created by the merger of French, German and Spanish Airbus partner companies) and BAE Systems (the British partner company) transferred their Airbus production assets to a new company, Airbus SAS. In return, they got 80% and 20% shares respectively. BAE would later sell its share to EADS.


Panavia Tornado

The Tornado was developed and built by Panavia Aircraft GmbH, a tri-national consortium consisting of British Aerospace (previously British Aircraft Corporation), MBB of West Germany, and Aeritalia of Italy. The aircraft first flew on 14 August 1974 and was introduced into service in 1979–1980. Due to its multi-role design, it was able to replace several different fleets of aircraft in the adopting air forces. The Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) became the only export operator of the Tornado in addition to the three original partner nations. Including all variants, 992 aircraft were built.


Coopetition

''
Coopetition Coopetition or co-opetition (sometimes spelled "coopertition" or "co-opertition") is a neologism coined to describe cooperative competition. Coopetition is a portmanteau of cooperation and competition. Basic principles of co-opetitive structures ...
'' is a word coined from cooperation and competition. It is used when companies otherwise competitors collaborate in a consortium to cooperate on areas non-strategic for their core businesses. They prefer to reduce their costs on these non-strategic areas and compete on other areas where they can differentiate better. For example, the GENIVI Alliance, now called COVESA, is a not-for-profit consortium between different car makers in order to ease building an
In-Vehicle Infotainment In-car entertainment (ICE), or in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), is a collection of hardware and software in automobiles that provides audio or video entertainment. In car entertainment originated with car audio systems that consisted of radios and c ...
system. Another example is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is a consortium that standardizes web technologies like
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...
,
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
and CSS.


Government, academia and industry

The Institute for Food Safety and Health is a consortium consisting of the
Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...
, the
Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...
's
Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition The Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN ( )) is the branch of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that regulates food, dietary supplements, cosmetics, drugs, biologics, medical devices, and radiological products. ...
, and members of the food industry. Some of the work done at the institute includes, "assessment and validation of new and novel food safety and preservation technologies, processing and packaging systems, microbiological and chemical methods, health promoting food components, and risk management strategies."


Consortium for installment-based purchases

Commonly known in the United States as a rotating savings and credit association (ROSCA) and also called Savings Clubs, Christmas clubs, ''sousou'' or even money circles, they are typically informal associations of people saving money together with a commonly shared goal: buying something with the same value. In this association its members contribute by paying equal amount installments (usually monthly or weekly) towards a common fund. On every installment the common fund reaches the goal value and someone is awarded this sum and from this point forward this person own the association the remaining amount, just as in a loan. This process repeats until every member is awarded the entire sum. These informal associations are specially popular among immigrants since they are a cheaper alternative to traditional financing and usually require no formal papers, credit history or even a bank account. Outside the United States these savings clubs can be formal and have a proper legislation. In some countries like Brazil, the ''consórcios'' are an integral part of the traditional banking system, where there are clubs for purchasing real estate, cars, and even for plastic surgery costs. Over 7 million people have engaged in these formal savings associations over the past years, adding to over U$10 billions in credit. Since these clubs have up to thousands of members, the awarding process is made by lottery and bidding and the common fund administrators charge a fixed fee in order to take responsibility and guarantee the integrity of the entire process. The only similar organization that offers a
FDIC The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is one of two agencies that supply deposit insurance to depositors in American depository institutions, the other being the National Credit Union Administration, which regulates and insures credi ...
approved service in the US i
savings.club


Legal nature of the consortium agreement in selected countries


France

In
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
, the consortium, considered a sub-type of
joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and economic risk, risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four rea ...
, has important theoretical and practical significance. The French legal system does not provide a definition and does not explicitly use the concept of a joint venture or consortium (''groupements momentanés d’entreprises''). The consortium agreement in France is a purely contractual cooperative contract that does not entail the creation of a third party. The consortium has no
legal personality Legal capacity is a quality denoting either the legal aptitude of a person to have rights and liabilities (in this sense also called transaction capacity), or altogether the personhood itself in regard to an entity other than a natural person ...
or
legal capacity Legal capacity is a quality denoting either the legal aptitude of a person to have rights and liabilities (in this sense also called transaction capacity), or altogether the personhood itself in regard to an entity other than a natural person ( ...
. The contract is concluded between two or more
natural Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
or
legal person In law, a legal person is any person or 'thing' (less ambiguously, any legal entity) that can do the things a human person is usually able to do in law – such as enter into contracts, sue and be sued, own property, and so on. The reason for ...
s who undertake to carry out certain works in order to implement a joint project which consortium members would not be able to carry out themselves. The consortium agreement is not explicitly regulated by the French legislator, but it is admissible in the light of the principle of freedom of contract interpreted from articles 6 and 1134 of the French Civil Code.


United Kingdom

Neither consortium nor joint venture have a legal definition in U.K. law. The second term is usually used to describe various types of agreements where two or more parties cooperate in conducting business activities. This manifests e.g. in the joint distribution of profit, sharing cash, assets, knowledge or abilities. As there are no legal provisions regulating in detail the consortium or joint venture, the relations between the parties participating in this type of agreement—when choosing a joint venture as a collaboration agreement or a special
partnership A partnership is an arrangement where parties, known as business partners, agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. The partners in a partnership may be individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments ...
—are subject to
common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipres ...
or the provisions of the partnership law. A consortium agreement governed by the general law of contract, similar to an ordinary partnership agreement, does not create a separate entity.


Germany

In
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
the view prevails that the consortium is a type of internal civil law partnership (§ 705–740 of the BGB). In external relations, consortium members may decide on
joint and several liability Where two or more persons are liable in respect of the same liability, in most common law legal systems they may either be: * jointly liable, or * severally liable, or * jointly and severally liable. Joint liability If parties have joint liabili ...
regulated by § 421 BGB, while internally there is sometimes a release from this liability. Joint ventures often include credit syndicates (Kreditkonsortien), securities issuing consortia, including mainly shares (''Emissionskonsortien''), construction consortia (''Baukonsortien'') also referred to as investment (''Investitionskonsortien'') and profit pools (''Ergebnispools''). Sometimes, special purpose partnerships established to jointly use construction facilities (''Planungsgesellschaften'') are listed in one category with the consortium and the pool. Cooperation agreements concluded under German law are not of a uniform legal nature. There is a great wealth of legal forms of cooperation that could be cautiously qualified as consortium agreements. This is in particular a civil law partnership in its internal and occasional variants (''Gelegenheitsgesellschaft''), as well as a partnership of building contractors (''ARGE'') and a structure simply referred to as the “consortium.”


Poland

In the Polish legal system, the legal nature of the consortium agreement is disputed. According to the prevailing approach, a consortium is a form of cooperation, different from a civil law partnership, undertaken between economically independent entities already operating on the
market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...
in order to implement a specific undertaking that is a segment of the regular activities of these entities, based on an unnamed contract and characterized by a temporary nature, minimization of institutionalization, and lack of separate
property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...
, the need to specify how the parties participate in the joint venture and the intention not to establish a “community” with partly own interests (the partnership as such). According to this concept, despite the very broad formula of a civil partnership provided for entities that undertake to cooperate in a designated way to achieve a common economic goal (which is a common element for both types of contracts), the partnership contract do not exhaust all forms of cooperation and automatic qualification of consortium contracts as partnerships is not allowed.M. Czerwiński, Grupa wykonawców w prawie zamówień publicznych, Wolters Kluwer, Warsaw 2020, (PL), p. 175


See also

*
Joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and economic risk, risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four rea ...
*
Trade association A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry. An industry trade association partic ...


References

* {{Authority control Types of organization