Understanding the Cross-Level Embeddedness of Interfirm Partnership Formation

This paper suggests a cross-level understanding of the embeddedness of interfirm partnering in the context of the formation of new partnerships. It makes a critical distinction among environmental embeddedness, interorganizational embeddedness, and dyadic embeddedness, stressing the importance of understanding the interaction of these different levels of embeddedness. This focus on the complex interaction effects of different levels of embeddedness of interfirm partnering sets this contribution apart from previous work in the field.