Inter-organizational forms and impacts in commodity sectors: a review and integration

Abstract

Commodity businesses account for more than 33% of the world trade and, simultaneously, face increasing sectoral competition and environmental pressures from both government and civil society. They are globally organized in different inter-firm configurations, and even when there are system-level goals, it does not imply that the constituent agent shares them. Notwithstanding the relevance of commodity firms, there is no systematic review of their inter-organizational configurations and impact on economic, social, and environmental terms. We review 141 papers published in management journals in the last 31 years, that simultaneously analyze a commodity firm and its inter-organizational form, to examine how commodity firms interact with each other and explore their economic, social, or environmental impact. Our contributions are threefold: (1) we identify that the network/cluster is the main inter-organizational form adopted in the commodity sector and that no research investigates a combination of both economic and environmental impacts, based on this finding, this paper contributes a consolidated framework to guide future research on inter-organizational forms of commodity firms by explicitly stating the link between inter-organizational forms and outputs; (2) we identify that almost 90% of the papers either do not mention a specific theory (45%) or use a single theory (42%) to guide their research, thus highlighting the need for theoretical development in the field; (3) given the relevance of the commodity sector in environmental challenges, this paper contributes both the conceptual and empirical base to policy design and implementation. This paper ends with contributions and suggestions for further research.