Negotiated order theory provides a useful tool for cooperative planning among organizations, which may be the best approach for addressing shared problems. Organizations can negotiate the terms of their future interactions with one another, and in so doing mold their interorganizational (IO) fields. Representatives of three major food manufacturers sought recommendations for policies and procedures for crisis management related to product tampering. A 2-year project was designed to (a) uncover deficiencies in the IO field's means of managing product-tampering crises, (b) describe the IO field's existing negotiated order related to such crises, and (c) recommend ways in which the IO field `s highly fragmented negotiated order could be transformed to achieve greater unity. The case presented provided the groundwork for an extension of negotiated order theory to interorganizational relations.
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