This study of the procurement relationships of two major U.S. auto manufacturers examines the effects of two dimensions of organizational interdependence on the performance of those relationships for the manufacturer: dependence asymmetry, the difference in actors' dependencies on each other in a dyadic exchange relationship, and joint dependence, the sum of dependence between actors in the relationship. Rather than focusing solely on dependence advantage and the concomitant logic of power, we focus on joint dependence, which operates through a logic of embeddedness. We examine how the effect of joint dependence on performance is mediated by specific elements of embeddedness: joint action, trust, and the quality and scope of information exchange. Results show that joint dependence enhances the performance of procurement relationships for manufacturers and that this effect is partially mediated by the level of joint action and the quality of information exchange between the partners. Decomposing dependence asymmetry into the conditions of a manufacturer's and a supplier's dependence advantage, we also find that while the manufacturer's dependence advantage diminishes its performance, the supplier's dependence advantage has a null effect. We discuss the implications of these findings for studies of interorganizational interdependence.

This paper investigates how the history of interaction between organizations and between organizational boundary spanners contributes to the formation of trust between firms. Our findings, using data on the supplier-buyer relationships of two major US auto manufacturers, suggest that history affects trust formation in a complex non-linear fashion, involving a period of ambivalence early in a relationship. We show that certain kinds of exchange partners can systematically reap differential returns from a common history of interaction. Organizational similarity significantly enhances the ability of exchange partners to translate the benefits of the joint history of interaction into a stock of trust.

LE Tilburg, a.tatarynowicz@uvt.nl T his paper explores the interplay between social structure and economic action by examining some of the evolutionary dynamics of an emergent network that coalesces into a small-world system. The study highlights the small-world system's evolutionary dynamics at both the macro level of the network and the micro level of an individual actor. This dual analytical lens helps establish that, in competitive and information-intensive settings, a small-world system could be a highly dynamic structure that follows an inverted U-shaped evolutionary pattern, wherein an increase in the small-worldliness of the system is followed by its later decline as a result of three factors: (1) the recursive relationship between the evolving social structure and individual actors' formation of bridging ties, which eventually homogenizes the information space and decreases actors' propensity to form bridging ties, creating a globally separated network; (2) self-containment of the smallworld network, or increasing homogenization of the social system, which makes the small world less accepting of and less attractive to new actors, thereby limiting formation of bridging ties to outside clusters; and (3) fragmentation of the smallworld network, or the small-world system's inability to retain current clusters. The study uses data on interorganizational tie formation in the global computer industry in the period from 1996 to 2005 to test the hypothesized relationships.

Departing from prior research analyzing the implications of social structure for actors' outcomes by applying either an ego network or a global network perspective, this study examines the implications of network communities for the invention productivity of firms. Network communities represent dense and nonoverlapping structural groups of actors in a social system. A network community lens helps identify new ways to study firms' access to diverse knowledge inputs in a dynamic system of interorganizational relationships. Specifically, we examine how the membership dynamics of a network community affect the invention productivity of member firms by either enabling or constraining access to broad, diverse knowledge inputs. Our findings suggest, first, that a firm reaps the greatest invention benefits in a network community with moderate levels of membership turnover. Second, a firm attains the greatest invention productivity when its own rate of movement across different network communities is moderate. Third, we find that community members located in the core of their network community can benefit more from membership dynamics and prior community affiliations than those on its periphery. In empirical analyses, we use the evolving community structure of the network of interorganizational partnerships in the global computer industry over 1981-2001 to predict firms' patenting rates.