مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

 مجله تحقیقات بازاریابی – Journal of Business Research

The early studies of cross-organizational alliance and cooperation strategies pay great attention to synergetic values and advantages of collaboration such as trust, common goals, mutuality, and complementary competence. These studies also examine forms of controls, governance, or organizational infrastructures for effective collaboration (Beamish & Lupton, 2015; Child & Yan, 1999; Huxham & Vangen, 2005; Rugman, D’Cruz, & Verbeke, 1995; Tallman & Shenkar, 1994). Most of these similar studies explain collaboration in phenomenal evidence, trying to provide practical implications rather than theoretic breakthrough.

In the recent decades, collaboration studies have shifted their attention toward theoretic corroboration using various paradigms. The popular paradigms include: (1) Transaction cost economics, (2) resource-based view of organizational competence, (3) resource dependence theory, (4) governance and administration for justice, and (5) knowledge development and organizational learning. For instance, Hamieda and Brey (2015); Macher and Richman (2008) and Wolter and Veloso (2008) apply the theory of transaction cost economics to justify a twofold purpose in organizational collaboration and strategic alliance: To minimize cost inefficiency and to explain prescriptively the choice for different collaboration modes (i.e., interaction forms and methods). The transaction cost economics theory treats opportunity cost as the key reason for collaboration. Arguably, this rationale cannot satisfy most of academic inquiries about motivations and outcomes of cross-organization collaboration such as vision sharing, mutuality building, and conflict resolutions (Gray, 1996).

Resource-based and resource dependence views are the other competing theoretic paradigms. They posit collaboration as an external resource to extend organizational competence, market power, or vitality (Hillman, Withers, & Collins, 2009; Martin-Rios, 2014). Theories in social governance and knowledge management contrarily assert collaboration as an internalized measure for management transparency, fairness, and resolving misunderstanding and misconduct across organizations and institutions (Sakarya, Bodur, Yildirim-Öktem, & SeleklerGöksen, 2012). Knowledge management conceives collaboration as a means to advance knowledge collectively both at organizational and social levels (Gray, 2000). Because these research designs are theorydriven, results tend to be theory-generated. As such, the collaboration studies often corroborate different, sometimes antithetic, results in similar collaboration contexts. Skeptics so arise. Thomson and Perry (2006) attribute this skepticism to the collaboration’s transient, abstruse qualities (i.e., mutuality, norms, autonomy, governance, trust, common goals, and commitment) and changes of external environment. Collaboration is still happening in a black box (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Huxham & Vangen, 2000).