The formation process of research and development consortia

The formation of interorganizational relations (IORs) is an understudied topic in organization theory. Academics, as well as practitioners, do not have a well-developed conceptualization of the creation. The dissertation addresses this issue by examining the formation of research and development consortia in the United States. The study proposes a model of the formation process. The model consists of five stages: perception of dependence/opportunity, formal communication, commitment to consortium arrangement, build/select a governance structure and commence research. Also, drawing from several research disciplines, hypotheses are developed on the potential effects of several factors: similarity of solicited organizations, expected complexity of the consortium and expected ease of transferring results to the member companies on the formation process. These hypotheses are tested with data collected from eight case studies. The case studies are also used to generate additional hypotheses of factors observed in the eight consortia to affect the formation: change in institutional environment, industry concentration, motive for consortium formation and prior relations. The model and the hypotheses are tested using survey data collected from 50 R&D consortia. The results from both the case studies and the survey analyses find strong support for the proposed model of consortium formation. They also show that the formation process is influenced by both environmental (i.e. industry concentration, change in institutional environment) as well as strategic choice variables (i.e. similarity of companies solicited to create the consortium, and prior relations). The study makes two contributions to the understanding of IORs. First, it is the only study to examine the complete formation process of several interorganizational relations and to use both case study and survey data. Second, it furthers the perspective that organizational actions are the result of the interaction between environmental constraint and strategic choices. Recommended future research will explore the importance of the formation process in determining IOR characteristics and performance