90 Academy of Management Review DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESSES OF COOPERATIVE INTERORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS PETER SMITH RING Loyola Marymount University ANDREW H. VAN DE VEN University of Minnesota DARKO MILOSEVIC Università LUM Jean Monnet This article examines the developmental process of cooperative interorganizational relationships (IORs). Framework is focuses on formal, legal, and informal socialpsychological processes by which organizational parties jointly negotiate, commit to and execute their relationship. The framework is elaborated with a set of propositions that explain how and why cooperative IORs emerge, evolve, and dissolve. The propositions have academic implications for enriching interorganizational relationships, transaction cost economics, agency theories, and practical implications for managing the relationship journey. IORs include strategic alliances, partnerships, coalitions, joint ventures, franchises, research consortia, and various forms of network organizations. Most research been focused on the antecedent conditions or structural properties of interorganizational relationships in comparison with other governance forms. Framework present useful insight about conditions leading to formation of IORs. Research was provided with assumptions trough four concepts for explaining how cooperative IORs emerge, grow, and terminate over time. Knowing the inputs, structure, and desired outputs of a relationship provides a useful context, where process is central to managing IORs. Managers need to know more about input conditions, investments, and types of governance structures required for a relationship. The ways in which agents negotiate, execute, and modify of an IOR strongly influence the degree to which parties judge it to be equitable and efficient. These processes also influence motivations to continue in, or terminate, the relationship over time (Friedman, 1991). CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND Ring and Van de Ven (1994) assume that business conditions and motivations exist, which are sufficient to cause two or more organizations to explore exchange using a cooperative IOR governed by a relational contract. Organizational parties desire to create a cooperative IOR that facilitates high commitment relations (Helper & Levine, 1992), but produces efficient and equitable solutions to conflicts as they arise. starting conditions was in assumed with four key concepts: (a) uncertainties inherent in a cooperative IOR, (b) assessments based on efficiency and equity, (c) need for internal resolution of disputes, and (d) importance of role relationships in cooperative IORs.