The principle of congruity in the analysis of international business cooperation

Abstract

This study investigates an under-researched topic: individual-to-individual or team-to-team interactions during the alliance pre-formation phase. We develop a general theory based on the principle of congruity for understanding the micro-dynamics of the alliance formation process. The attitudes of each party in an alliance towards their prospective partner depend on the level of mismatch between their initial evaluations of the contributions of each partner, and on their wish intensity and speed to reach congruity. The impact of different managerial cultural backgrounds (special theory) and mind-sets (special theory application) are theorized. Further applications are considered and all are presented as testable propositions.

Understanding the Processes Underlying Inter‐firm Collaboration: Mutual Forbearance and the Principle of Congruity

“…The principle of congruity, in the context of a message between two parties, predicts an individual's attitude change, taking into consideration the evaluation of both the content and the source of the message. In a two-party collaborative deal-negotiation setting, the attitude of one party regarding the contribution of the 7 Although this principle has been explored in other contexts (Brady and Sniderman, 1985;Fatas-Villafranca et al, 2011;Gross and Wiedmann, 2015;Olshavsky and Miller, 1972;Perkins and Forehand, 2012;Salciuviene et al, 2010;Shapiro, 1969;Styvén et al, 2020;Zhang, 2010), including international business and management studies (Buckley et al, 2015;Vohra and Davies, 2020;Walsh et al, 2014), it has had limited application to international collaboration.…”

“…Mutual forbearance is a pre-cooperation mechanism. Prospective cooperation partners tend to evaluate their own potential contributions to the venture as well as those of their partners differently (Buckley, Cross and De Mattos, 2015;De Mattos and Salciuviene, 2019;Stopford and Wells, 1972).…”

“…Ames, Weber and Zou, 2012) so they may grasp insights of each other's mindsets, behaviours and even values. We present the concept of mutual forbearance as the formation of a tacit dyadic collaborative agreement through the lens of the principle of congruity 'reverse causality' (Buckley, Cross andDe Mattos, 2015, p. 1050) or the principle of congruity reversed. Whereas the principle of congruity (Osgood and Tannenbaum, 1955) depicts, in a broad sense, an actor's agreement with those that are perceived as supporting his evaluations/arguments, the reverse interpretation highlights the adjustments needed for the principle to hold in cases where the 'other' (entity/individual) does not agree with the actor's evaluations/arguments.…”

The negative influence of the entrepreneur’s level of higher education on the attractiveness of European SMEs as alliance partners in Brazil: the role of practical experience and international entrepreneurial orientation

“…Thus, the higher the similarity (or match) between partners' expectations regarding their mutual contributions, the higher is the attractiveness as potential partners apropos alliance-formation. This dyadic view of attractiveness may also be seen as the combination of the perspectives of each partner supported by their individual assessments of the importance of the contributions of their counterpart (De Mattos, Sanderson and Ghauri, 2002, Buckley et al, 2015.…”

“…In the context of pre-alliance formation, or for firms attempting to ally, it represents the characteristics of a partner-firm that may be of interest to another partner-firm apropos such prospective alliance. The contributions that each partner may potentially bring to the alliance can be the basis for the evaluation of the likelihood of success of such a venture, depending on their value as perceived by each partner (Buckley, Cross and De Mattos, 2015).…”