The strategic and economic benefits go as a first issue on the formation and management of cooperative arrangements (LANE; BEAMISH, 1990). However researches have showed that social-cultural issues play an important role at the performance of this kind of arrangements (EBERS, 1997; GULATI, 1985; RING; VAN DE VEN, 1994) and that the economic and technological issues, by the time, are embedded in social relations being shaped by them (GRANOVETTER, 1985; POLANYI, 1944; UZZI, 1997). By taking in count the different phases of the process of the formation of cooperative organisational arrangements (GULATI, 1998), some one could say that the social ties play great influences on each phase, where theses variation depend on the type of arrangement. This paper consists on a theoretical essay whose proposition is a theoretical model of analysis about the relation between social ties and the formation of cooperative organisational arrangements. The first part presents the central argument and the basic assumptions of the study. The second part is a review of the concept of cooperative organisational arrangements and the influence of the social issues. The third part consists on the review of the social ties' concept. The last part presents the model of analysis and recommendations to empirical test.
cooperative organisational arrangements; social ties; embeddedness
