Using Van de Ven and Poole's (1995) extensive assessment of process theories as an intellectual scaffold, we review theoretical contributions to our understanding of alliance dynamics and process. It appears that of four generic theoretical engines, only three—life cycle, teleology, and evolution—are reasonably well covered in this literature. Process studies informed by a dialectical theory, however, appear to be markedly absent. We explore the characteristics and contributions of a dialectical lens in understanding interorganizational collaborations by invoking a longitudinal case study of a biotechnology-based alliance. The case illustrates the coevolutionary interchange of design and emergence, cooperation and competition, trust and vigilance, expansion and contraction, and control and autonomy. It also emphasizes the importance of treating alliances as heterogeneous phenomena, of alliance performance as subject to social construction, and of unintended consequences as a change agent. The emerging ontological, epistemological, and methodological implications of a dialectical perspective comprise a novel extension to the existing literature.

This paper outlines a constructivist framework for understanding the outcomes of the entrepreneurial process. The core thesis of the paper is that, taken alone, neither the personality of the entrepreneur nor the structural characteristics of the environment determine the outcome. Rather, it is argued that the outcome of the entrepreneurial process is emergent from a complex interaction between the entrepreneur, the environment, chance events and prior performance. The framework is illustrated with evidence from biographies of six entrepreneurs involved in successful processes.

The paper introduces a theory of organizations built on the assumption that human behavior in organizational settings is relatively undetermined, multidirectional, and contradictory. Consistent with this assumption, the paper proposes a constructivist perspective on organizational persistence, equilibration, and structuration. The constructivist perspective represents an attempt at integrating extant, and often treated as incommensurable, theories of organizations within a complex framework.

Organization theory is, as the title of this special issue suggests, at a crossroads. At a time when the world of and around organizations is changing very fast, and when the need to invent new approaches to organizations and their management is apparent, organization theory is challenged either to encompass these changes and contribute to their elucidation or be viewed as a quaint, but largely irrelevant, enterprise. This paper is one response to the challenge defined above. In it, we seek to analyze how and why one particular organization, characterized by a highly unorthodox management approach and strong performance, developed as it did. The innovative approach to management coupled with high performance is central to the question of relevance.

Whatever happened to Digital Equipment? Or to F.W. Woolworth? Or to British Leyland? These are all companies that were at one time leaders in their industries but are now defunct. Their story is an increasingly common one: they were unable to adapt effectively to changes taking places in the world around them; they relied too heavily on old recipes when new ones were required; they were blindsided by new developments whose significance they failed to anticipate.At the dawn of the 21st century; the world of business in the 'new economy' is changing at an astonishing pace, and now, more than ever, firms must innovate or die. For most large firms, however, innovation is difficult. Existing procedures are built on the presumption of stability; existing controls are built on the search for predictability; existing HR policies are built on the assumptions of homogeneity in the labor force; and existing mindsets are influenced by what worked yesterday. Together, these forces are powerful sources of inertia. What made a company great will keep it great. Innovation threatens existing procedures, existing controls, existing HR policies, and existing mindsets. Innovation threatens those very things that made the company great. Thus, innovation is difficult, particularly in the world of the large corporation.Widespread recognition of the need for innovation, and of the difficulty of stimulating and sustaining innovation and the spirit of entrepreneurship in organizations, has spawned a mini-industry of management research and consultation focusing on these issues. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that this is one of the principal themes of research and consultation at the 7 7Human Relations [0018-7267(200101)54:1] Volume 54(1): 77-84: 015574