Post-search Follow-up

Abstract

The search conference has come to be regarded as a critical intervention strategy within interorganizational domains. Yet the existing literature focuses more on the search conference as an event and less on what happens after the event. This paper focuses on post-search conference strategies in interorganizational domains. Four follow-up strategies — abort, fizzle-out, sustain, and diffuse and dissipate — emerge in the assessment of two search conference-based interventions in two different industries in Turkey. The paper shows that these strategies are co-produced in two dimensions: dialogue conditions among the stakeholders in the domain and the leadership strength of the referent organization.