| Relationships between firms are at the heart of how industries are organized. As a result, inter-organizational relationships have become a central object of study by organization scholars from various disciplinary perspectives. However, despite significant attention focusing on the formation of these relationships and their positions in industrial networks, very little attention has been given to how organizations effectively manage these relationships over time. Using a multi-case, inductive study of eight technology collaborations between ten firms in the computing and communication industries, this dissertation examines how inter-organizational relationships engender innovation, organizational adaptation, and industry transformation in unpredictable environments.; In particular, comparisons of successful and unsuccessful collaborations show that collaborative innovation outcomes are the result of organizational processes that pairs of firms use to divide leadership, organize their collaboration networks, and jointly manage time. Specifically, successful collaborations rotate leadership between the partners to encourage contributions, promote unexpected problem solving, and allow partners to influence the collaboration's direction. Neither domineering nor shared leadership is as effective. Second, they prune networks of existing ties acting as bottlenecks to fast information flow and, third, reorganize this network with competency pairing that pairs actors with complementary knowledge across organizational boundaries. Taken together, these two processes---network pruning and competency pairing---re-organize the collaborative network around the most innovative ties and effectively bind the organizations together. Fourth, successful collaborations synchronize development using roadmap entrainment, phase recombination, and pacing alignment. Synchronized development provides a single clock that guides innovation strategy and organizational behavior in collaborative technology development.; Overall, I reframe inter-organizational relationships as symbiosis , defined as intense collaborative relationships generating mutually reinforcing adaptive changes to partner's strategies and structures. I then contrast this symbiotic viewpoint to existing conceptions of inter-organizational relationships, such as arms-length and embedded relationships, both oriented toward efficient exchanges. More broadly, I contribute to strategy and organization theory by developing theory about how organizations achieve competitive advantage through symbiotic relationships, noting how strategy is embedded not only in long-standing social relations but also in subtle organizational processes.; Key words. Organizational Symbiosis, Inter-Organizational Relationships, Collaborations, Alliances, Networks, Technology Innovation, Computer Industry. |
