Advances and Trends in Interorganizational Relationships: A Parallel Between Brazilian and International Studies

Abstract

The article seeks to understand the achieved results, the progress made, as well as perceived gaps in the study of interorganizational relationships, for the purpose of conjecture future research propositions on the topic. The method used to develop this study was the bibliographic research with descriptive purpose, in order to provide greater familiarity with the problem, improving the existing conceptions. It is a theoretical research as to its nature and bibliographic as to the technical procedures. Its aim is to identify in national and international journals the stage where are interorganizational networks studies, encompassing alliances, cooperation networks, joint ventures, and other types of cooperation, in addition to presenting, in a bibliometrical method, during the period 2004-2009, how much has evolved the demand for this topic, its main investigators and significant advances. One of these gaps is related to the fact that, despite the development of cooperation agreements of various types, in practice, the literature has neglected the evaluation of the efficacy of different forms of governance. Another gap in the literature is related to the management of cooperative agreements with companies with heterogeneous and/or homogeneous characteristics (size, turnover, structures).