Two Sides to Every Story: An Ethnohistorical Approach to Organizational Partnerships

Organizational partnerships are special forms of interorganizational cooperation which permit two or more independent entities to pool resources for achievement of a common goal. Although partnerships of various types promise significant benefits to organizations and to society, the literature suggests that such unions are subject to high rates of instability and failure. Existing hypotheses of interorganizational failure are not able to explain or predict outcomes in many cases of partnership. Limitations of existing hypotheses may derive from theoretical and methodological biases which have constrained the range of phenomena investigated in partnership research. This paper proposes an ethnohistorical research strategy for the study of interorganizational partnerships. The new approach, called ethnohistorical mapping, provides a reliable means to reconstruct a partnership's past from the perspectives of two or more organizational entities. Map data are analyzed to isolate contrasts in the content of reported experience, and contrasts are used to discover and illuminate microorganizational processes and variables underlying partnership development. The new approach is illustrated using preliminary data on an international joint‐venture organization. Tentative conclusions drawn from casestudy analysis suggest enhancements to existing explanations of partnership outcomes, and also suggest the utility of ethnohistory as a tool in organizational management, [ethnohistory, interorganizational relations, methodology, organizational theory, partnerships]