Interorganizational relations in industrial systems: a network approach compared with the transaction cost approach

Abstract

A network approach, as it is developed by some Swedish researchers in industrial marketing and international business (see e.g. Hägg & Johanson (ed.), 1982 and Hammarkvist, Håkansson & Mattsson, 1982) is compared with the transaction cost approach associated with Oliver Williamson (e.g. Williamson, 1975, 1979, 1981). The reason we make such a comparison is that we often get questions from colleagues in the scientific community, suggesting that what we try to do is rather similar to what the transaction cost approach is doing.