Using AI to find business partners actually makes small companies more dependent on Big Tech and kills their bargaining power.
March 30, 2026
Original Paper
AI-Mediated Partner Selection and Structural Asymmetry in Inter-Organizational Relationships: Evidence from Vietnamese Emerging Market Firms
SSRN · 6487564
The Takeaway
While AI helps companies find better strategic matches, it creates a 'dependency trap' where firms lose leverage to the platform providers. For small businesses, using generic AI tools actually widens the gap with larger competitors rather than leveling the playing field.
From the abstract
This paper investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities shape partner selection in inter-organizational relationships (IORs), with particular attention to how dependence on big-tech AI platforms reconfigures cooperation dynamics and structural asymmetries between firms. We employ a sequential mixed-methods design comprising (1) a cross-sectional survey of 347 Vietnamese manufacturing, logistics, and technology firms engaged in strategic alliances, analysed using partial least squar