POPULAR TALENTED AND NICE: HOW FIRMS EVALUATE AND SELECT INTERORGANIZATIONAL PARTNERS

Acknowledgments.We extend thanks to Tom Astebro, Joel Baum, Whitney Berta, Tony Calabrese, Martin Evans, Paul Ingram, Robin Kalbfleisch, Ella Marie, Joel Podolny and Brian Silverman for their insights and suggestions that improved,this paper. We thank the Dean's Office Fund, Rotman School of Management and the Connaught Fund, University of Toronto for financial support. We are most appreciative of Terry Amburgey’s assistance in revising this paper. An earlierversion of this paper won the BPS Best Paper Award at the Academy,of Management Conference 2000, Toronto. Please do not cite without permission from the authors ,1 POPULAR, TALENTED AND NICE: HOW FIRMS EVALUATE AND SELECT INTERORGANIZATIONAL PARTNERS ABSTRACT Prior research on interorganizational relationships suggests that firms tend to choose past partners for future alliances, because they have access to information on these partners that reduces selection uncertainty. However, the types of informatio n utilized have not been