Cooperative Strategies Interest Group

The Cooperative Strategies Interest Group focuses on issues related to cooperative strategies at the functional, business, corporate, group, and network levels of analysis. The group is interested in work that explores cooperative strategies within a sector of the economy (for example, among firms or among government agencies) and across sectors (for example, between firms and government agencies or between firms and non-profit organizations). Cooperative arrangements include inter-organizational alliances, joint ventures, federations, constellations, networks, vertical buyer-supplier relations, franchises, community service collaborations, public-private partnerships, corporate board interlocks, etc. The purpose of this Interest Group is to help create useful knowledge on the antecedents and consequences of cooperative arrangements and effective cooperative strategies as well as on the processes that inhibit or facilitate the emergence, evolution, and termination of cooperative strategies.

Research streams encompass a broad range of phenomena, including relational mechanisms such as trust, knowledge sharing, and conflict resolution; social interaction involving power relations, legitimization, and intervention; organizational perspectives such as relational capabilities, organizational routines, and cooperative governance structures; organizational outcomes such as social capital, learning, innovation, and financial performance; dynamics and evaluation with respect to processes such as formulating cooperative strategies, negotiating and transacting cooperative arrangements, implementing and managing cooperative strategies, and change and renewal of cooperative strategies.

Topic Areas of Research

• How do competitive, corporate, growth and innovation strategy decisions influence cooperative strategies?
• Under what conditions does reliance on cooperative strategies rather than organic growth or mergers and acquisitions increase the likelihood of success?
• What differences exist in the emergence, negotiation, management and termination of cooperative strategies involving dyads versus multi-party collaborations and networks?
• How do actors leverage relational, structural, and organizational attributes of networks to shape organizational behavior and outcomes of cooperative arrangements?
• What differences exist in the emergence, negotiation, management and termination of cooperative strategies involving organizations within one sector of an economy versus those involving organizations from differing sectors of an economy?
• What environmental factors shape decisions to rely on cooperative strategies?
• What environmental factors inhibit reliance on cooperative strategies?
• What roles do resources and capabilities play in decisions to rely on cooperative strategies? How do they contribute to the effective use of such strategies?
• Does the existence of industrial districts, clusters, or other agglomerations make it easier for organizations to engage in cooperative strategies?
• How should an organization with multiple manifestations of cooperative strategies organize their management?
• When and why is managing cooperative strategies as a portfolio effective? How should the portfolio be managed to ensure its coherence?
• What is the role of central governance in managing a portfolio of cooperative strategies?
• What is the role of social processes such as legitimation in the emergence and evolution of organizational manifestations of cooperative strategies?
• How do firms establish the micro foundations of their cooperative governance arrangements (e.g., managerial incentives, cooperative routines, and functional capabilities)?
• What unique factors drive the emergence and implications of international cooperative strategies and cross-border cooperative arrangements such as alliance networks?
• How do cooperative strategies help develop industry standards, drive industry convergence, and shape the evolution of sectors of an economy?
• How do firms govern cooperative arrangements?
• What is the role of the board of directors and other formal governance mechanisms or agreement provisions in managing cooperative strategies?