Despite substantial scholarly interest in the role of contracts in alliances, few studies have analyzed the mechanisms and conditions relevant to their influence on alliance performance. In this paper, we build on the information-processing view of the firm to study contracts as framing devices....

Leveraging a longitudinal dataset concerning 102 inter-firm disputes, we evaluate the effects of contract structure on trust and on the likelihood of continued collaboration. We theoretically refine and empirically extend prior research by (a) distinguishing between control and coordination...

This paper investigates how contract structure influences inter-firm dispute resolution processes and outcomes by examining a unique dataset consisting of over 150,000 pages of documents relating to 102 business disputes. We find that the level of contract detail affects the type of dispute...