Momeni, Mojtaba ArabMostofi, AmirhosseinJain, Vipul2026-05-142026-05-142026-05-14Computers & Industrial Engineering, Volume 218, August 2026, 112108. ISSN: 0360-8352 (Print), Elsevier BV, 112108-112108. doi: 10.1016/j.cie.2026.1121080360-8352http://hdl.handle.net/10292/21079Joint venture alliances have emerged as an effective approach for acquiring advanced technologies by allowing organizations to pool resources, knowledge, and competitive advantages. Large-scale projects are often assigned to multiple companies as non-integrated joint ventures, sometimes involving companies from different countries, each exhibiting different levels of expertise and quality standards. Disparities in deliverable quality among these partners can increase project duration, generate idle resources, and raise overall costs. This study proposes investing in quality enhancement programs for selected partners to mitigate these challenges. A novel hybrid multi-step framework is developed, integrating a non-cooperative game for delay cost allocation, an optimal control model for planning quality improvements, and cooperative game formulations to fairly distribute costs and benefits among partners. Results indicate that the proposed approach effectively reduces both total project costs and individual partners’ costs. Sensitivity analysis further reveals that higher quality-conversion coefficients and increased partner idleness costs enhance the effectiveness of the cooperative strategy, increasing the cost advantage of the cooperative strategy over the non-cooperative one.© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. You are not required to obtain permission to reuse this article.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/01 Mathematical Sciences08 Information and Computing Sciences09 EngineeringIndustrial Engineering & Automation40 Engineering46 Information and computing sciences49 Mathematical sciencesJoint Venture ProjectsQuality investmentGame theoryHierarchical approachJournal ArticleOpenAccess10.1016/j.cie.2026.112108