Interorganizational situations – An explorative typology

Firms tend to engage in interorganizational relationships (IORs) to an increasing extent, for various reasons, in different configurations and at different organizational levels. Identifying and describing types of IORs is therefore important. The research objective of this study is to synthesize earlier research on IORs and thereby develop a typology that is both coherent and nuanced. This is achieved by exploring qualitative interview material regarding IORs using correspondence analysis. The results show that IORs can be grouped into four distinct situations, each of which is characterized by a combination of relationships, and the content of the relationships. IOR situations are further shown to be distributed in a two-dimensional space that depends on both the immediacy level and the establishment level of the situation.