Chapter 2: Sensemaking in Interorganizational Relationships: A Multiple Paradigm Approach

Today, organizations find themselves in an environment full of dramatic changes. Forces such as globalization and technological innovation greatly impact organizational performance. In adapting to such an environment, many organizations form, strengthen, or occasionally break strategic alliances with other organizations. As such, organizations are regarded as open systems. An important problem facing researchers of such systems is how to define the environment surrounding organizations. Contingency theory has explained phenomena associated with organizations, using the concept of uncertainty. Researches on interorganizational relations, such as the resource dependency model, have focused mainly on uncertainty and interdependence (Aldrich & Mindlin, 1978; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978; Sasaki, 1990; Yamakura, 1993).¹