Fit for the Task: Complementarity, Asymmetry, and Partner Selection in Alliances

Autor: Marco Furlotti, Giuseppe Soda
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Organization Science. 29:837-854
ISSN: 1526-5455
1047-7039
DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2018.1205
Popis: Most existing theories of relationship formation imply that organizations establish ties to procure complementary resources, and that doing so adroitly generates relational rents.\ud \ud While this entails a responsibility for organizations to recognize and harness complementarity, most theories struggle with ambiguity around the concept of resource complementarity, neglect its power implications, and rely on rules-of-thumb that assign no role to managers' intentions.\ud \ud To explain the formation of ties that successfully combine critical resources, we propose that a positive interplay among resources only exists insofar as organizations use task requirements to guide their combination. As such, a well-matched tie is one that manages task resource interdependence while offsetting imbalances in task-related resources.\ud \ud We test our theory on project-based, inter-organizational partnerships for public construction in Italy. We find that: (1) The probability of tie formation increases with the quality of the match between the task and actors' resources; (2) There are two distinct, task-related dimensions along which this happens: depth and scope; (3) The effect of these dimensions dwarfs the effect found by measures that assess complementarity irrespective of task; and (4) The probability of tie formation decreases when a task calls for resources that potential partners possess in unequal amounts.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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