Nicholas Berente, Case
Western Reserve University
Abstract
Entrepreneurial
firms inevitably need to partner with established organizations in
order to
grow and exploit opportunity. Whether
these established organizations are customers, financial organizations,
suppliers, competitors, or some hybrid, the relationship between the
startup
and an existing organization is arguably different than the
relationship between
one established organization and another. In
this paper, we engage in an in-depth case
study of a single
entrepreneurial firm and selected relationships over time in an effort
to
generate theory. We apply three
theoretical views to the data: the opportunism lens, the relational
lens, and
the dynamic lens. Observations imply that different theoretical lenses
apply
across different phases in the relational life cycle. The
dynamic lens is especially useful early in
the relationship; the relational lens is most powerful as the
relationship
matures; and the opportunism lens applies most significantly in the
intermediate stages.
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