The oil shocks of 1974 and 1979/80 transformed the business environment of the oil industry from one of stability to one of turbulence. As a result, the international oil majors were forced to reformulate their strategies and redesign their organizational structures and management systems. This...

By bringing together elements of a radical new approach to the firm based on a biological metaphor of the ecosystem, this unique book extends the limits of existing theories traditionally used to investigate business networks.

The emerging knowledge-based view of the firm offers new insight into the causes and management of interfirm alliances. However, the development of an effective knowledge-based theory of alliance formation has been inhibited by a simplistic view of alliances as vehicles for organizational...