Interorganizational Relationships and Networks

Abstract

In the recent past, organizations increasingly built up longer-term relationships with other organizations, be they suppliers, customers, competitors, trade associations, educational institutions, or local political entities. These interorganizational relationships can take a variety of forms, such as long-term sourcing agreements, joint ventures, or alliances. Interorganizational networks among individuals and organizations represent the overall patterns that evolve from, and foster, such relationships. This article highlights why organizations forge different forms of relationship and what consequences result from the interorganizational links and the positions of actors within their networks of relationships. It presents the three major research traditions that have investigated these issues and their most important findings: first, the research tradition grounded in strategic management and organization science studying mainly bilateral relationships between organizations; second, the two research traditions devoted to interorganizational networks, namely social network analysis that is mainly founded in social-psychology and sociology; third the study of clusters organizations, i.e., local agglomerations of co-specialized firms and other institutions, mainly based in economics, economic geography, and sociology.