A consortium is an association

Voluntary association

A voluntary association or union is a group of individuals who enter into an agreement as volunteers to form a body to accomplish a purpose.Strictly speaking, in many jurisdictions no formalities are necessary to start an association...

 of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

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.

Consortium is a Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 word, meaning 'partnership

Partnership

A partnership is an arrangement where parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests.Since humans are social beings, partnerships between individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments, and varied combinations thereof, have always been and remain commonplace...

, association or society' and derives from consors 'partner

Partner

A partner is:*A friend who shares a common interest or participates in achieving a common goal*A Significant other in an intimate relationship*A member of a partnership*A business partner...

', itself from con- 'together' and sors 'fate', meaning owner of means or comrade

Comrade

Comrade means "friend", "colleague", or "ally". The word comes from French camarade. The term is frequently used by left-wing organizations around the globe. "Comrade" has often become a stock phrase and form of address. This word has its regional equivalents available in many...

.

Educational

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation

Committee on Institutional Cooperation

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation is the academic consortium of the universities in the Big Ten Conference plus former conference member, the University of Chicago....

 and Five Colleges, Inc.

Five Colleges (Massachusetts)

The Five Colleges comprises four liberal arts colleges and one university in the Connecticut River Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, totaling approximately 28,000 students. The schools belong to a consortium called Five Colleges, Incorporated, established in 1965...

, along with the Claremont Consortium are among of the oldest and most successful higher education consortia in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The Committee on Institutional Cooperation

Committee on Institutional Cooperation

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation is the academic consortium of the universities in the Big Ten Conference plus former conference member, the University of Chicago....

 includes the members of the Big Ten athletic conference plus the University of Chicago. The participants in Five Colleges, Inc. are: Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

, Hampshire College

Hampshire College

Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1965 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts...

, Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College is a liberal arts college for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was the first member of the Seven Sisters colleges, and served as a model for some of the others...

, Smith College

Smith College

Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...

, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst

University of Massachusetts Amherst

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...

. Another example of a successful consortium is the Five Colleges of Ohio

Five Colleges of Ohio

The Five Colleges of Ohio is an academic consortium of five selective private liberal arts colleges in the U.S. state of Ohio. It is a nonprofit educational consortium established in 1995 to promote the broad educational and cultural objectives of its member institutions...

 of Ohio: Oberlin College

Oberlin College

Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

, Ohio Wesleyan University

Ohio Wesleyan University

Ohio Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college in Delaware, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1842 by Methodist leaders and Central Ohio residents as a nonsectarian institution, and is a member of the Ohio Five — a consortium of Ohio liberal arts colleges...

, Kenyon College

Kenyon College

Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio, founded in 1824 by Bishop Philander Chase of The Episcopal Church, in parallel with the Bexley Hall seminary. It is the oldest private college in Ohio...

, College of Wooster and Denison University

Denison University

Denison University is private, coeducational, and residential college of liberal arts and sciences founded in 1831. It is located in Granville, Ohio, United States, approximately 30 miles east of Columbus, the state capital...

. The aforementioned Claremont Consortium (known as the Claremont Colleges) consists of Pomona College

Pomona College

Pomona College is a private, residential, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. Founded in 1887 in Pomona, California by a group of Congregationalists, the college moved to Claremont in 1889 to the site of a hotel, retaining its name. The school enrolls 1,548 students.The founding member...

, Scripps College

Scripps College

Scripps College is a progressive liberal arts women's college in Claremont, California, United States. It is a member of the Claremont Colleges. Scripps ranks 3rd for the nation's best women's college, ahead of Barnard College, Mount Holyoke College, and Bryn Mawr College at 23rd on the list for...

, Claremont Graduate University

Claremont Graduate University

Claremont Graduate University is a private, all-graduate research university located in Claremont, California, a city east of downtown Los Angeles...

, Claremont McKenna College

Claremont McKenna College

Claremont McKenna College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college and a member of the Claremont Colleges located in Claremont, California. The campus is located east of Downtown Los Angeles...

, Harvey Mudd College

Harvey Mudd College

Harvey Mudd College is a private residential liberal arts college of science, engineering, and mathematics, located in Claremont, California. It is one of the institutions of the contiguous Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds....

, Pitzer College

Pitzer College

Pitzer College is a private residential liberal arts college located in Claremont, California, a college town approximately east of downtown Los Angeles. Pitzer College is one of the Claremont Colleges....

, and the Keck Graduate Institute. These consortia have pooled the resources of their member colleges and the university 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 located in Berea, Kentucky

Berea, Kentucky

-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 9,851 people, 3,693 households, and 2,426 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,055.4 people per square mile . There were 4,115 housing units at an average density of 440.9 per square mile...

. The association consists of 36 private liberal arts college

Liberal arts college

A liberal arts college is one with a primary emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences.Students in the liberal arts generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including sciences as well as the traditional...

s and universities spread across the central Appalachian mountains in Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

, North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

, Tennessee

Tennessee

Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...

, Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

, and West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

. Collectively these higher education institutions serve approximately 42,500 students. Six research universities in the region (University of Kentucky

University of Kentucky

The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...

, University of North Carolina

University of North Carolina

Chartered in 1789, the University of North Carolina was one of the first public universities in the United States and the only one to graduate students in the eighteenth century...

, University of Tennessee

University of Tennessee

The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...

, West Virginia University

West Virginia University

West Virginia University is a public research university in Morgantown, West Virginia, USA. Other campuses include: West Virginia University at Parkersburg in Parkersburg; West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Montgomery; Potomac State College of West Virginia University in Keyser;...

, University of Virginia

University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

, and Virginia Tech) 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

Syndicate

A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies or entities formed to transact some specific business, or to promote a common interest or in the case of criminals, to engage in organized crime...

. This type of loan is more commonly known as a syndicated loan

Syndicated loan

A syndicated loan is one that is provided by a group of lenders and is structured, arranged, and administered by one or several commercial banks or investment banks known as arrangers....

. In England it is common for a consortium to buy out financially struggling football clubs in order to keep them out of liquidation

Liquidation

In law, liquidation is the process by which a company is brought to an end, and the assets and property of the company redistributed. Liquidation is also sometimes referred to as winding-up or dissolution, although dissolution technically refers to the last stage of liquidation...

.

Alyeska Pipeline Service Company

Alyeska Pipeline Service Company

The Alyeska consortium refers to the major oil companies that own and operate the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System through the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company.-History:...

, the company that built the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System

Trans-Alaska Pipeline System

The Trans Alaska Pipeline System , includes the Trans Alaska Pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is one of the world's largest pipeline systems...

 in the 1970s, initially was a consortium of BP

BP

BP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...

, ARCO

ARCO

Atlantic Richfield Company is an oil company with operations in the United States as well as in Indonesia, the North Sea, and the South China Sea. It has more than 1,300 gas stations in the western part of the United States. ARCO was originally formed by the merger of East Coast-based Atlantic...

, ConocoPhillips

ConocoPhillips

ConocoPhillips Company is an American multinational energy corporation with its headquarters located in the Energy Corridor district of Houston, Texas in the United States...

, Exxon

Exxon

Exxon is a chain of gas stations as well as a brand of motor fuel and related products by ExxonMobil. From 1972 to 1999, Exxon was the corporate name of the company previously known as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey or Jersey Standard....

, Mobil

Mobil

Mobil, previously known as the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, was a major American oil company which merged with Exxon in 1999 to form ExxonMobil. Today Mobil continues as a major brand name within the combined company, as well as still being a gas station sometimes paired with their own store or On...

, Unocal

Unocal Corporation

Union Oil Company of California, dba Unocal is a defunct company that was a major petroleum explorer and marketer in the late 19th century, through the 20th century, and into the early 21st century. It was headquartered in El Segundo, California, United States.On August 10, 2005, Unocal merged...

, and Koch Alaska Pipeline Company.

Airbus example

Airbus Industrie 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 Industrie 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 maximise the transfer prices of their sub-assemblies.

In 2001, EADS

EADS

The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company N.V. is a global pan-European aerospace and defence corporation and a leading defence and military contractor worldwide...

 (created by the merger of French, German and Spanish Airbus partner companies) and BAE Systems

BAE Systems

BAE Systems plc is a British multinational defence, security and aerospace company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, that has global interests, particularly in North America through its subsidiary BAE Systems Inc. BAE is among the world's largest military contractors; in 2009 it was the...

 (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.

Coopetition

Coopetition 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

GENIVI Alliance

The GENIVI Alliance is a non-profit consortium founded on March 2, 2009 by BMW Group, Delphi, GM, Intel, Magneti-Marelli, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Visteon, and Wind River Systems. The goal of the alliance is to establish a globally competitive, Linux-based operating system, middleware and platform for...

 is a not-for-profit consortium between different car makers in order to ease building an in-vehicle infotainment

Infotainment

Infotainment is "information-based media content or programming that also includes entertainment content in an effort to enhance popularity with audiences and consumers." It is a neologistic portmanteau of information and entertainment, referring to a type of media which provides a combination of...

 system.

Another example is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...

, which is a consortium that standardizes

Standards organization

A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization , or standards setting organization is any organization whose primary activities are developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpreting, or otherwise producing technical standards that are...

 web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 technologies like HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

, XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 and CSS

CSS

-Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code...

.