The purpose of this study is to suggest a conceptual and practical guideline to the decision-makers who are faced with the difficulty of structuring the organizational form of interfirm cooperation. Existing
studies have three critical shortcomings re...
The purpose of this study is to suggest a conceptual and practical guideline to the decision-makers who are faced with the difficulty of structuring the organizational form of interfirm cooperation. Existing
studies have three critical shortcomings regarding the research question: strong optimism toward interfirm cooperation, an oversimplified decisionmaking process and inconsistent recommendations to the practitioners. In
order to overcome these limitations, this study reviews five major theoretical perspectives and relevant empirical studies. Based on this review, this study proposes a two-stage contingency framework. The rest of
the paper will elaborate stepwise decision process and key consideration criteria in each decision-making stage.