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The interorganizational environment faced by business organizations presents unique challenges for management accounting and control. Past management accounting research has shown interest in such collaborations because despite their benefits, such relationships pose significant issues of coordination and control. As information and communication systems supplement management control systems in their support of decision facilitation and decision influencing, examining the design of management accounting systems (MASs) in the management of interorganizational relationships and assessing how it affects the attainment of interorganizational exchange partner performance objectives is important. In this chapter, I extend past accounting research to examine the complementary nature of decision-facilitation and decision-influencing objectives of MAS design as enabled by the use of integrated information systems in interorganizational settings. The economic theory of complementarity is employed to examine synergistic effects of complementary MAS objectives. A field survey is used to examine hypothesized relationships, and data were obtained from 116 organizations involved in strategic alliance activity. This chapter reports findings that support the view that the degree of complementarity in decision-facilitation and decision-influencing objectives assists in the development of capabilities that enhance performance in the interorganizational relationship. The study blends theory in the areas of strategy, information systems, and management accounting and extends management accounting research in the context of IT-enabled interorganizational relationships.

Developments in Information Technology (IT) are perceived to be a major driver of interorganizational cooperation, both within and across industry boundaries. These developments have challenged the creation of interorganizational competitive advantages, as conceptualized in the Relational View (e.g. Dyer & Singh, 1998). The relationship between IT and effectuated interorganizational competitive advantage, however, is still unclear. This chapter is a first attempt to shed light on this unexplored area in the literature. We focus our analysis on developing a conceptual framework of the relationship between IT and interorganizational resource complementarity, which is an important determinant of interorganizational competitive advantage. Our framework suggests that cooperating organizations need to develop three distinctive but interrelated capabilities in order to effectuate interorganizational resource complementarity by means of IT. It is proposed that these capabilities give rise to interorganizational competence building, forming a pre-condition for achieving interorganizational competitive advantage. Preliminary support for our framework and proposition is provided by a brief case study of an interorganizational relationship between a large European financial services firm and a major European telecommunication firm.

Drawing on the experience of the Observatories, a set of interconnected research centers in Italy, this chapter explains why academics are in one of the best positions to orchestrate interorganizational initiatives of change and development, and highlights two prerequisites that appear necessary to render salient this orchestrator role of academics: (i) the extensive use of multiple approaches of collaborative research and (ii) the creation and maintenance of a platform allowing the management and diffusion of the network-based learning mechanisms underlying each change and development effort. The contributions extend existing knowledge on organization development and collaborative research.

Trust is an important facilitator of successful B2B relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate affect-based antecedents of both interpersonal and interorganizational trust, and their impact on the performance of buyer–supplier relationships. The authors ask two research questions: (1) What are affect-based dimensions of interpersonal and interorganizational trust? (2) How do interpersonal and interorganizational trust influence buyers’ operational performance?

The authors use data from an original survey of 156 buyer–supplier relationships between multinational enterprise subsidiaries and local suppliers in the Thai manufacturing sector to develop a structural model in which the authors test the hypotheses.

Consistent with social exchange theory and social psychology, the empirical analysis shows that affect-based dimensions at the individual level, namely, likeability, similarity and frequent social contact, and at the organizational level, namely, supplier firm willingness to customize and institutionalization of cooperation, are important for establishing trust. In addition, interpersonal trust enhances buyers’ operational performance indirectly via interorganizational trust.

Buying and selling firms may develop organizational trust by developing processes that enhance organizational trust. Individuals with purchasing or sales responsibilities may enhance trust in their personal relationship. However, such interpersonal trust needs to be translated to the organizational level to benefit organizational performance.

The findings contribute to the literature on affect-based antecedents and outcomes of trust. Specifically, the authors offer theory and empirical evidence regarding the contribution of salespersons toward affect-based dimensions of trust and its impact on buyer’s operational performance.

This paper aims to analyze the effects of enabling management control systems (MCSs) and relational capabilities (interorganizational learning and coordination) on conflict management in innovation ecosystems.

Shedding light on relational governance, structural equation modeling (symmetric analysis) and qualitative comparative fuzzy-set analysis (asymmetric analysis) were applied to a sample of 164 Brazilian firms associated with science and technology parks (STPs), a specific type of innovation ecosystem.

The results of the symmetric analysis showed that enabling MCSs have a direct and positive effect on conflict management, as well indirect effects through interorganizational learning and coordination. The results of the asymmetric analysis indicated four solutions to promote high levels of conflict management, with enabling MCS solutions standing out, as they are present in the majority of cases in the sample.

Interorganizational conflict in innovation ecosystems are inevitable, but the previous literature is inconclusive about how the interrelation between MCS and relational capabilities can foster the management of these conflicts. By providing evidence on the predictors and solutions that lead to high levels of conflict management, this study presents valuable insights into how firms and STPs can mutually promote organizational and relational benefits throughout the innovation activities developed among those involved in innovation ecosystems.

This paper aims to propose mechanisms of the dark side of interorganizational relationships from a social psychological perspective. The purpose is to understand the role of boundary spanners’ social psychological processes that may trigger the dark side effects.

Multple mechanisms are developed through three social psychological theories, namely, social identity theory, system justification theory and social learning theory.

Boundary spanners’ social psychological processes can trigger the dark side of interorganizational relationships via mechanisms such as excessive cooperation, reification, system justification and path dependence in learning.

This paper concludes with a discussion that offers a new perspective on research on dark side effects and the managerial implications of the present analysis.

This paper contributes to the current literature by extending the interpersonal social psychological processes that could explain the dark side of interorganizational relationships. This paper is a step forward to answer the calls for multilevel considerations of the dark side effects and inspire future research on the role of social psychological processes in dark side effects.

Relationships are a critical success factor for business operations across markets with dominant Chinese culture, like Taiwan. The intersection of a high-quality institutional environment and a traditional Chinese cultural background in Taiwan provides a unique setting for exploring different types of relational mechanisms and ensuing renqing practices (i.e. reciprocal exchange of favors with empathy). The purpose of this paper is to examine when, where and how Taiwanese high-performance organizations manage and deploy interorganizational renqing across their business relationship portfolios. Answering these questions can help build a theory of interorganizational renqing and advance interorganizational reciprocity theorization more generally.

This research is motivated by two key research questions. First is related to how renqing givers understand renqing in the context of their organizations and their interorganizational business relationship portfolios. Second, whether organizations prefer a neutral renqing balance, a renqing debt or a renqing surplus is another point of interest. The study is based on interviews with upper echelon elite informants at six high-performing Taiwanese organizations with business relationship portfolios worldwide.

It is found that interorganizational renqing is deployed as a hybrid resource, taking on the functions of both an investment and a type of insurance against risk. Two notable differences between interorganizational and interpersonal renqing are also noted. First, the social exchange norm aspect of renqing points to salient social exchange norms also in interorganizational exchanges. This confirms the importance of understanding not only the regulative and normative dimensions of business relationships, as a type of institution, but also the cognitive dimensions and underlying institutional logics. Second, this study shows that unlike at the interpersonal level, the notion of renqing debt is not common at the interorganizational level – at least not within high-performance organizations with market leader positions.

This study explores interorganizational renqing practices and their strategic deployment through the use of “accessing” and “embedding” relational mechanisms. The study also adds to the poorly understood nature of interorganizational reciprocity and provides support for developing a theory of interorganizational renqing, as a form of interorganizational reciprocity within a Chinese cultural context.

This paper aims to present the results from a case study that investigated interorganizational learning in a buyer and seller relationship in the context of the maritime industry. This examination emphasized unraveling how the buyer and seller in the case study interacted and transferred knowledge when using a new business model that relied on servitization. Furthermore, this paper also addresses and discusses work practices, and the relationship between intra- and interorganizational learning.

A case study entailing the introduction of digital technology and a new business model into the maritime industry was used as an empirical example of interorganizational learning. The case study was conducted over a period of over one year and focused on a buyer of freight ships and a seller of servitized technology used on the ships. The organizations involved were the ships, the shipowner’s office and the ship engine supplier. The primary data acquisition methods comprised semi-structured interviews and observations.

The case identified interorganizational learning within the organizations at the individual, group and organizational levels, but only a few learning signs could be viewed as bidirectional interorganizational learning that can create knowledge and competitive advantages for the organizations. This is explained by the interorganizational learning context and the organizations’ motivation for learning at a strategic level.

This paper addresses an identified need for empirical studies on how interorganizational learning unfolds within organizations and connects to intraorganizational learning. Interorganizational learning studies often examine partnerships and joint ventures, in which partners have entered into these relationships with learning as a specific goal. By choosing a case in which interorganizational collaboration is anchored in operational matters, the study demonstrates the importance of motivation and agenda when entering into partnerships, concerning how inter- and intraorganizational learning develops within organizations. Furthermore, approaching these levels from an interrelated and practice-oriented perspective challenges established success criteria for interorganizational learning.

The primary purpose of this study is to explore the antecedents of interorganizational trust within an international joint venture (IJV) context. In exploring how interorganizational trust is developed during the course of managing IJVs, we will look at fair action as a key factor in building interorganizational trust. Based on the existing literature, we propose the fair joint decision‐making process, cultural adaptation and the fair distribution of bargaining power as being antecedents of interorganizational trust within the IJV context. After developing hypotheses about the relationships between these three antecedents and interorganizational trust as well as causal relations between the antecedents, an empirical study is conducted using a sample comprised of 109 IJVs located in Korea. The findings show that perceived fairness in the joint decision‐making process and the distribution of bargaining power directly affects trust‐building between IJV participants; and also reveal the indirect effects of cultural adaptation on the development of interorganizational trust.

Sharing tacit knowledge across firm boundaries is challenging in architectural and engineering design projects as tacit knowledge is embedded in the designer’s mind. It thus requires autonomous motivation. This study aims to examine how clients integrate distributive justice (DJ), procedural justice (PJ) and interactional justice (IJ) to motivate tacit knowledge sharing in interorganizational architectural and engineering (A/E) design projects.

A theoretical model was built, describing how the combination of distributive, procedural and interactional justice influences tacit knowledge sharing. This model was then verified using latent profile analysis (LPA) of 360 A/E design projects.

A total offour subgroups with quantitatively different combinations of distributive, procedural and interactional justice were identified. Within each subgroup, the levels of the three forms of justice were quite aligned. The results indicate that clients often implement interorganizational justice in a collective manner. Among the four subgroups, projects with the highest level of justice combination have a significantly higher level of tacit knowledge sharing than the other three. This indicates that sharing of tacit knowledge is driven by the overall level of interorganizational justice.

The configurational approach complements previous research by presenting how combinations of interorganizational justice influence tacit knowledge sharing in A/E design projects.