Relationship And Inter-Organizational Relationships

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In general terms, inter-organizational relationships are the links and ongoing transactions between two or more organizations (Oliver, 1990). In order to sustain the input, process, and output cycle, organizations would somehow contact to other organizations. So, the relationships subsume the cooperation and competition among organizations for limited resources. Cooperation between firms describes the strong and extensive social, economic, and technological ties in pursuit of efficiency and value creation (Anderson & Narus, 1991). In management literature, inter-organizational relationships are expressed as interfirm relationships or alliances, after it became obvious that business transactions evolve into relationships over time (Ritter &…show more content…
Relationship learning is the generation and transfer of specialized knowledge between parties in result of regular interfirm transactions and cooperation (Dyer & Singh, 1998; Grant, 1996). The main components of specialized knowledge are product, process, and management information (Capon & Glazer, 1987) of which, organization’s environment functions as a natural source (Nonaka, 1994). In their study on cross-border buyer-seller transactions, Jean et al. (2010) define relationship learning as “the extent to which the supplier and its international customer work together through the joint exchange of information and know-how, analyzing and solving operational and strategic issues and problems to facilitate communication within the relationship”. Selnes and Sallis (2003) conceptually differentiate relationship learning and organizational learning in three points. First, there are meanings and values created commonly through the history of the relationship, which does not belong to an organization individually. Second, it requires joint effort and cooperation for learning, where only one party’s willingness to make it happen does not suffice. Third, the consequences of relationship learning are different from organizational learning because it is multiparty and the process effects more than one…show more content…
In this study, relationship learning is regarded as a potentially positive outcome of exchanges under such conditions. The proposed model is exhibited in Figure 1. The mechanisms are explained in the following sections. There are two main assumptions underlying this conceptualization. The first one is that it refers to the regular buyer-seller exchanges rather than research and development projects or strategic alliances, which are naturally established for knowledge generation. The second is that the model embodies ongoing relationships, which already passed the initial phase of getting

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