The three faces of inter-organizational relationships: towards a theory of logistics relationships, strategy, and inter-organizational learning

A growing concern of today's business executives is the increasing volatility of their organization's environment. In order to manage these turbulent environments, inter-firm collaborations are becoming more and more pervasive. A critical question, however, is "are such inter-organizational relationships working?" According to several researchers they are apparently not very successful.

The purpose of this research is to develop a rigorous, comprehensive, wellgrounded theoretical model describing inter-organizational logistics relationships (lOLRs). It began with the following research questions in mind:

• How do lOLRs form?
• How do strategic and non-strategic lOLRs differ?
• Finally, is the learning perspective more effective than existing ones, in describing and explaining lOLRs?

(1) Designed - Evolutionary dimension (based on the nature of lOLR formation);

(2) Operational - Strategic dimension (based on the of criticality of the lOLR);

(3) Individual - Organizational dimension (reflecting the level of involvement).

In doing so, characteristics of lOLRs which emerged from the study were identified. Thus on "Face One", which was formed between the Designed - Evolutionary and Operational - Strategic dimensions, a typology of lOLR formation, was developed. This typology is shown to have its roots in Mintzberg's (1978) typology of strategies; sharing many of the characteristics therein. A 3x3 matrix, forms "Face Two" of the "Three Face" model. 'Occupants' to six of the nine cells (Cells 1,2,3,5,6, and 9) were identified while three others (Cells 4,7, and 8) were found to be empty. A careful review of cell-features clearly supports the lack of 'occupants'; transaction costs of managing and monitoring lOLRs in these cells is too high to warrant their existence. Bringing the two "Faces" together automatically resulted in "Face Three", which was formed between the Designed - Evolutionary and Individual - Organizational dimensions. Learning characteristics of the lOLRs identified in the study were found identical to those identified by earlier researchers such as Shrivastava (1983) and DiBella et al. (1996). Finally, based on the characteristics of the lOLRs identified through this research, several propositions for future research are presented.