Interorganizational Relationships
Since the 1990s, the subject of “Interorganizational Relationships” (IORs) has gained the interest of academics in several fields (Donnan & Comer, 2001), such as strategic marketing, Management Information Systems (MIS), operation management and logistics, and strategic management. The diversity of approaches related to IOR conceptualization has led to fragmented knowledge bases (Mohr & Nevin, 1990; Claro, et al., 2003; Durand, et al., 2006). The present chapter discusses this concept and proposes an integrated view of IOR evolution in a network context. Furthermore, a presentation of IOR governance typologies is exposed to emphasize the hierarchy-market dichotomy and the hybrid form as the combination of the two perspectives. Last, based on a literature review, the chapter exposes the attributes characterizing interorganizational relationships climate success to demonstrate the informal aspect of interorganizational context.