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Cited by 2,221

The DOI matches its OpenAlex record; 10 of the 10 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

A General Theory of Network Governance: Exchange Conditions and Social Mechanisms

Candace Jones, William S. Hesterly, Stephen P. Borgatti·1997·Academy of Management Review

Abstract

A phenomenon of the last 20 years has been the rapid rise of the network form of governance. This governance form has received significant scholarly attention, but. to date, no comprehensive theory for it has been advanced, and no sufficiently detailed and theoretically consistent definition has appeared. Our objective in this article is to provide a theory that explains under what conditions network governance, rigorously defined, has comparative advantage and is therefore likely to emerge and thrive. Our theory integrates transaction cost economics and social network theories, and, in broad strokes, asserts that the network form of governance is a response to exchange conditions of asset specificity, demand uncertainty, task complexity, and frequency. These exchange conditions drive firms toward structurally embedding their transactions, which enables firms to use social mechanisms for coordinating and safeguarding exchanges. When all of these conditions are in place, the network governance form has advantages over both hierarchy and market solutions in simultaneously adapting, coordinating, and safeguarding exchanges.

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Registry

OpenAlex · 10.5465/amr.1997.9711022109

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Metadata

Authors
Jones, C., Hesterly, W. S., & Borgatti, S. P.
Venue
Academy of Management Review
Published
1997-10
Volume
22
Issue
4
Pages
911
ISSN
0363-7425 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2056239166
Cited by
2,221
References
10
FWCI
42.27
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A General Theory of Network Governance: Exchange Conditions and Social Mechanisms. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.5465/amr.1997.9711022109
The paper
Jones, C., Hesterly, W. S., & Borgatti, S. P. (1997). A General Theory of Network Governance: Exchange Conditions and Social Mechanisms. Academy of Management Review. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1997.9711022109

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.