11,128 research outputs found

    Interorganizational Systems and Trust in Strategic Alliances

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    How managers can build trust in strategic alliances: a meta-analysis on the central trust-building mechanisms

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    Trust is an important driver of superior alliance performance. Alliance managers are influential in this regard because trust requires active involvement, commitment and the dedicated support of the key actors involved in the strategic alliance. Despite the importance of trust for explaining alliance performance, little effort has been made to systematically investigate the mechanisms that managers can use to purposefully create trust in strategic alliances. We use Parkhe’s (1998b) theoretical framework to derive nine hypotheses that distinguish between process-based, characteristic-based and institutional-based trust-building mechanisms. Our meta-analysis of 64 empirical studies shows that trust is strongly related to alliance performance. Process-based mechanisms are more important for building trust than characteristic- and institutional-based mechanisms. The effects of prior ties and asset specificity are not as strong as expected and the impact of safeguards on trust is not well understood. Overall, theoretical trust research has outpaced empirical research by far and promising opportunities for future empirical research exist

    Boundaryless Management - Creating, transforming and using knowledge in inter-organizational collaboration. A literature review

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    Current literature on organizations often argues that firms are becoming increasingly dependent on knowledge residing outside their own boundaries requiring organizations to increase their entrepreneurial abilities and make their boundaries more flexible and permeable. This paper reviews the literature on what might be called interorganizational knowledge work. Implied in this focus is an assumption of clear organizaitonal boundaries. Rather than taking these boundaries and their importance for granted, the current review, however, aims at relativizing these boundaries. By focusing the empirical phenomenon of collaboration between individuals in different organizations, four different streams of literature with different constructions of the organizational boundary and its importance were identified: the literature on learning in alliances and joint ventures, the literature on collaboration in industrial networks, the literature on social networks and communities of practice and finally the literature on geographical clusters and innovation systems. The above four streams of the literature are reviewed with a special focus on the following three questions: 1. What is the role of (organizational) boundaries in interorganizational knowledge work? 2. What do we know about how these boundaries can be overcome? 3. What are the implications for managing interorganizational knowledge work spelled out in the literature?Interorganizational collaboration; Knowledge Management; Literature review

    On the Evolution of Trust, Distrust, and Formal Coordination and Control in Interorganizational Relationships: Towards an Integrative Framework

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    In this article, we discuss the evolution of trust, distrust, and formal coordination and control in interorganizational relationships. We suggest that the degrees to which managers trust and distrust their partners during initial stages of cooperation leave strong imprints on the development of these relationships in later stages of collaboration. This derives from the impact of trust and distrust on: (1) formal coordination and control; (2) interorganizational performance; and (3) the interpretations that managers attribute to the behavior of their partners. Collectively, our arguments give rise to a conceptual framework, which indicates that there is a high propensity for interorganizational relationships to develop along vicious or virtuous cycles. By integrating and reconciling previous work on the trust-control nexus, and by emphasizing the dynamics associated with it, the article contributes to a more comprehensive and refined understanding of the evolution of interorganizational cooperation.evolution;trust;distrust;formal coordination;interorganizational relationship;formal control

    Trust, Organizational Controls, Knowledge Acquisition from the Foreign Parents, and Performance in Vietnamese International Joint Ventures

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    Successful adaptation in strategic alliances "calls for a delicate balance between the twin virtues of reliability and flexibility" [Parkhe 1998]. On one hand, the joint venture must be flexible enough to respond to the uncertainties of competitive business environments because it is not feasible to plan for every possible contingency. Yet, on the other hand, unfettered flexibility invites dysfunctional behavior, such as opportunism and complacency. This delicate balance accompanies a parallel balance between trust and control of the joint venture. The primary goal of this study is to empirically examine this relationship in the context of Vietnamese international joint ventures (IJVs) by building on the model of knowledge acquisition and performance in IJVs established by Lyles and Salk [1996]. This study makes three major contributions to the literature. First it confirms several findings of the original Lyles and Salk study [1996]. Second, we strengthen Lyles and Salk's original model by incorporating multiple measures of both interorganizational trust and control as independent variables. Finally, this study represents one of the first in-depth examinations of business in the emerging Vietnamese economy.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39713/3/wp329.pd

    Coping with Problems of Understanding in Interorganizational Relationships: Using Formalization as a Means to make Sense

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    Research into the management of interorganizational relationships has hitherto primarily focused on problems of coordination, control and to a lesser extent, legitimacy. In this article, we assert that partners cooperating in such relationships are also confronted with ñ€˜problems of understandingñ€ℱ. Such problems arise from differences between partners in terms of culture, experience, structure and industry, and from the uncertainty and ambiguity that participants in interorganizational relationships experience in early stages of collaboration. Building on Karl Weickñ€ℱs theory of sensemaking, we advance that participants in interorganizational relationships use formalization as a means to make sense of their partners, the interorganizational relationships in which they are engaged and the contexts in which these are embedded so as to diminish problems of understanding. We offer a systematic overview of the mechanisms through which formalization facilitates sensemaking, including: (1) focusing participantsñ€ℱ attention; (2) provoking articulation, deliberation and reflection; (3) instigating and maintaining interaction; and (4) reducing judgment errors and individual biases, and diminishing incompleteness and inconsistency of cognitive representations. In this way, the article contributes to a better understanding of the relationships between formalization and sensemaking in collaborative relationships, and it carries Karl Weickñ€ℱs thinking on the relationship between sensemaking and organizing forward in the context of interorganizational management.Formalization;Sensemaking;Interorganizational Cooperation;Understanding

    Contractual Alliance Governance: Impact of Different Contract Functions on Alliance Performance

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    Recent research on alliance governance has emphasized that contracts can have both a control and coordination function. In this paper, we test the impact of these different contract functions on alliance performance. Conducting structural equation analyses on a sample of 270 Dutch technology alliances, we disentangle the relationship between different contract functions, partner cooperation and alliance success. Our data show that different contract roles have a different impact on partner cooperation within the alliance. In addition, we find strong indications that the presence/absence of prior trustful collaboration and the number of alliance partners moderate the relationship between contract functions and partner cooperation. Finally, our data provide evidence that contract functions indirectly influence alliance success via partner cooperation

    Success factors for managing purchasing groups: an empirical survey

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    In this article, we identify success factors for managing small and intensive purchasing groups by comparing successful and unsuccessful Dutch purchasing groups in a large-scale survey. Transaction costs economics and social exchange theory are used as theoretical frameworks for our broad empirical investigation. We found that the success factors studied that are related to interorganizational trust, the formality of the group, and uniformity of the group members are not success factors for managing purchasing groups. For our data set, the most important success factors are no enforced participation, sufficient total contribution of efforts, all members contribute knowledge, all members rarely change representatives, fair allocation of savings, and communication. We discuss the academic and practical implications of the success factors found
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