Inter Organizational Relations (IOR) have evolved from representing a small share of the
revenues of large corporations in the Fortune 1000 list, to represent more than 20% of
the turnover of a large proportion of these companies (Kale et al., 2009). Although the
financial crisis of 2007 and subsequent collapse of institutions like Lehman Brothers have
caused a significant decline in the activities of the western economies, the need to do more
with fewer resources has increased interest in partnerships as one way of innovating while
controlling costs. Hansen (2009) reported on one such project in the field of energy
management improvement through customer-supplier integration models (e.g., energy
service companies, or ESCO, in which the income of one of the partners is conditioned
by the savings of the other partner).
While collaboration between organizations is not new, IOR have evolved, caused by
factors such as globalization of markets and the development of new technologies (Porter
and Fuller, 1986), market pull orientation (Ohmae, 1989), the difficulty of competing
throughout the complete value chain of the organization (Garcia-Ochoa, 2003), and
limitations in resources (Williamson, 1985; and Cobianchi, 1994). Collaboration can now
be considered a pillar of economic sustainability (Shymko and Diaz, 2012).
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