Choice Of Governance Form Research Articles

Offshoring, local market entry, and the strategic context of cross-border alliances: The impact on the governance mode

International alliances have been studied in considerable depth, but almost entirely as host market entry options. And while much global value production is done through international alliances, the organizational forms used to control dispersed value chains are often reduced to “make or buy”—that is, captive operations vs. market-based outsourcing. We examine how strategic purpose (vertical or offshore production vs. horizontal or production for local market entry) affects the choice of cooperative governance form. We contend that an offshore production role, as opposed to a market entry strategy, makes an alliance more likely to be governed as a contractual alliance than as a joint venture. Data on 261 cross-border alliances in the major appliances industry largely support our hypotheses. Further, strategic purpose moderates the effects of alliance activities and of the institutional environment of the host country on the choice of governance form.

Distance and Distinctiveness: Choice of Governance Mode in International Collaboration

Although the home countries of firms engaging in international collaboration can differ in many dimensions, studies have tended to concentrate on one of these, i.e., cultural distance. In those cases that several dimensions of distance have been considered, these have been treated as independent factors. Building on social psychological insights we develop theory concerning the interactive effects of different dimensions of distance (cultural, language and religious) on the choice of governance form in international collaboration. Data from over 20,000 contractual alliances and equity joint ventures confirm that different dimensions of distance have an interactive effect on governance choice, suggesting that the psychological mechanisms through which such factors lead to decisions deserve to be included in the analysis.

How risk influences the choice of governance mode in biopharmaceutical inter-firm relationships

This paper proposes a new theoretical framework for assessing the influence of risk in shaping the governance form in biopharmaceutical inter-firm relationships. In particular, we propose a multidimensional operationalization of relational and performance risk and, by following Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and Real Options (RO) theory constructs, we hypothesize a relation between the aforementioned risk components and the choice of governance form. Specifically, following TCE reasoning, we hypothesize that a high level of relational risk leads towards more hierarchical governance forms, while, following RO theory, we hypothesize that a high level of performance risk leads toward market-oriented governance forms; finally, we hypothesize a moderating effect of each risk component on the other. We empirically test our framework through the analysis of 353 inter-firm relationships signed worldwide between pharmaceutical and biotech companies from 2007 to 2010. The results show substantive support for our theoretical framework. Furthermore, we find a significant moderating effect of the performance risk on the TCE relation between relational risk and governance forms.

A strategic needs perspective on operations outsourcing and other inter-firm relationships

Abstract This paper considers two issues: the formation of inter-firm relationships, and the choice of governance form. These have been widely investigated in both the strategic management and operations management fields. This paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, we address why firms enter inter-firm relationships by hypothesizing that managers enter them to pursue three strategic needs, that is: efficiency/effectiveness, knowledge/learning, and global market access. Our first contribution evidences the relationship between the above strategic needs and a number of operational objectives that managers normally pursue in an inter-firm relationship. Second, we hypothesize how the achievement of the above strategic needs influences the choice of governance form. Third, we compare our framework with the operations management approach to strategic networks by evidencing similarities between the two approaches and showing that managers pursue a similar approach when they face inter-firm agreement issues, whether agreements are supply-chain- or strategy-oriented. We empirically test our framework using secondary data consisting of 95 inter-firm agreements. Our findings largely support the theoretical predictions, and also have important practical implications. First, our results offer managers “practice” suggestions on what kinds of objectives can be pursued together in inter-firm relationships to achieve specific strategic needs, and which governance form is most suitable, depending on the strategic need in question. Second, we consider the strategic reasoning concerning inter-firm relationship management, and some engineering issues, such as time and quality objectives, that, while largely considered in the operations management literature, are often neglected in the strategic management field.