Network picturing: An action research study of strategizing in business networks

Our paper is concerned with how managers understand their surrounding network and what strategic actions they take based on this insight. Recent research in the areas of network management and business relationships shows increasing interest in the interplay between cognition and action, particularly on how managers relate perceptions about their business network (“network picturing”) to decision-making and strategizing activities. In this study, we apply a novel research approach combining process research and action research methodology. Our sample is introduced to business network theories and concepts, and the use and adaptation of these concepts results in managerial options being articulated and applied. Our findings add new insight in the field of network strategy and network picturing. Network picturing represents a way to understand the boundaries of the firm and how this understanding affects managers' decisions. This differs from the fundamental distinction between the external and the internal environments of classical strategy analysis. In terms of network picturing, strategizing is a way to understand the resulting actions or network outcomes that managers see as viable within their surrounding network. We also provide a conceptual process exercise as an example of how this insight can be relevant for managers in their decision-making processes.     

Network position and identity: A language-based perspective on strategizing

This article explores processes of strategizing within business networks by showing how managers employ sensemaking to cope with network paradoxes. It takes the linguistic turn to analyze how participants discursively construct their organizations' identities and positions within a ‘designed’ network context. In doing so, the paper attempts to answer the research question posed so provocatively over a decade ago by Håkansson and Ford (2002): by exploring how companies interact in business networks. Our contribution is to show how firms interact by taking a language-based perspective on strategy to help understand the links between network, organizational and micro-levels of social construction. An in-depth discussion of a case study is presented, with particular emphasis on the identity-constructing processes affecting (and affected by) the positioning and strategizing of various network actors. We conclude by reflecting on the theoretical and practical contributions of our analysis, the latter focusing on tensions in Indigenous business development.     

Critical events in time and space when cooperation turns into competition in business relationships

This study aims to improve our understanding of the processes of critical events in time and space that lead from cooperation to competition in dyadic business relationships. Within the business network approach there has recently been a call for research into both time and competition, and research combining both is novel. The study identifies and analyzes critical events in time, their connections with each other and the inner and outer space related to each event. The empirical study is based on four qualitative cases. The findings contribute to existing research by presenting several new perspectives on events and spaces, which improves our understanding of time and process in business networks. Business relationships may evolve from cooperation to competition through chronological events involving information sharing, sales-related and opportunistic activities. In space, these events mostly relate to the focal business relationships, the individual companies and third parties, such as customers.     

Dimensions of space in business network research

Interactive processes constitute a core notion in business exchange, leading to the concepts of relationships and networks. The constitution of process, comprising unfolding events, activities, and connected structures, relies on difference in space and time. While research has been devoted to time, the concept of space has thus far remained largely unexplored within business network research.This conceptual paper focuses on spatial dimensions for conducting research according to the IMP business network approach. Business actors create connected relationships and networks that exist and change as continuous emerging spatial structures and as mental maps in the managerial mindset. These relational network processes and structures are located, distributed and experienced in and across space. Drawing on economic geography and conceptual frameworks from the business network approach, we propose new dimensions and conceptualizations of space for the study of these networks. The paper delivers proposals to extend our current understanding of business networks as emerging and changing spatio-temporal entities with implications for theory development, research and practice.     

Processes of business model evolution through the mechanism of anticipation and realisation of value

This study applies a process approach to analyse the evolution of a business model in a network environment. The business model provides a context in which to observe change processes arising through interactions amongst network actors. Based on a systematic search of the literature, the study proposes six processes by which business models evolve, motivated by the causal mechanism of value anticipation/realisation. We argue that actors' anticipations and realisations of value, arising continuously through repeated interactions, motivate changes in their interactions, which cause their interlinked business models to evolve over time. We explain the connection between the evolving business model and value in a way that accommodates interactive and time dimensions of value. The process explanation is demonstrated with empirical evidence from the longitudinal case history of an IT company. What appear to be discontinuous phases in the history of the focal firm's business model are shown to be causally connected by continuous event sequences. The study contributes to process methods by providing a worked example of a strong process explanation applied to a network business phenomenon.     

Rediscovering strategic content in ‘strong process’ research on business network innovation

A strong process view on business networks takes ‘becoming’ as a starting point for understanding business networks and innovation. This view tends to leave the role of strategic content implicit and underdeveloped. Yet, embracing content from a process angle is important to obtain insight in the role of strategic intent and value transformation. A philosophical architecture for addressing this gap is currently lacking. In the context of business network innovation, this paper seeks to explore how content can remain theoretically relevant and how it can be inserted in a strong process view underpinning industrial marketing research.This conceptual paper makes a distinction between content-centric, process-content co-evolution, and process-centric philosophies. These are mutually exclusive and fail to cater to the gap introduced. A fourth strategy is introduced that adopts the process-centric view as a foundation but uses pragmatism and encapsulation to reach out to content research. The paper offers methodological considerations for empirical research and applies the resulting approach to industrial marketing. It concludes with implications for research in industrial marketing.     

Studying processes in and around networks

The industrial marketing literature on business networks has drawn attention to the importance and yet the complexities of managing in a context of fluid and dynamic inter-organizational relationships. This context also poses significant challenges to researchers who wish to better understand the evolution of networks and the processes occurring in and around them in order to generate valuable theoretical insight and actionable knowledge for practitioners. After reviewing the nature of process research, this paper considers the key methodological choices and tradeoffs faced by process researchers interested in studying network dynamics. These choices and tradeoffs are illustrated by drawing on a series of exemplary process studies of networks derived from the entrepreneurship, strategic management, organization theory and industrial marketing literatures. The paper concludes by proposing that future studies might benefit from focusing on key network transformations and from mobilizing programmatic investments.     

Sensemaking in business networks: Introducing dottograms to analyse network changes

The issue of how different actors in a network understand changes to their industry remains an under-researched but crucially important area. According to the industrial network approach, companies interact according to their perceptions of the relevant network environment and their subjective sensemaking of the network logic and exchange mechanisms relating to the activities, resources, and actor bonds. Using a case study of the Norwegian/Japanese seafood distribution system, we propose a methodology that allows us to better understand these perceptions. We develop an analytical method based on ‘dottograms’ which facilitates a more detailed understanding of change within networks. In particular, we show how the dimensions of time (past, present and future changes) and space (change at actor, dyad or network level) can be better understood, and also how the method facilitates our understanding by ascribing reasons for the change. As such, we provide a methodological contribution to research on business networks and change.     

Business networks and retail internationalization: A case analysis in the fashion industry

The paper presents different theoretical perspectives on the issue of business networks and their role in the process of internationalization. With regard to methodology, a specific case study is conducted of a vertically integrated firm in the fashion supply chain, which has implemented branding and retailing strategies in international markets. The case analysis, which is the result of a longitudinal study conducted over several years, aims at an in depth analysis of the extent to which business relationships represent a learning context involving opportunities/constraints in the internationalization process. The paper outlines the relationship between the specific business model, the international patterns followed, and business relationships. Three research questions are posed and discussed. Some final remarks on the relationships between business networks and international retail expansion conclude the work.     

Decoding network dynamics

Business networks are fluid, yet decoding network dynamics provides a number of methodological challenges. This research illustrates how, by using a technology-bundled business net, the temporal fluidity of the network boundary and the associated processes and events that affect this can be understood. Abductive logic is applied in combination with the concepts of network positions and roles to analyze these processes and events. Empirical observations from a case study embedded in the optical recording media industry spanning the period 2001–2008 are used to illustrate the network dynamics resulting from technological change that drive the evolution of the focal net. The case illustrates that in order to decode network dynamics, a number of aspects need to be considered: how the network boundary is delimited, process, time, events and the conceptual lenses that can provide a basis for analyzing change.     

Business service networks and their process of emergence: The case of the Health Cluster Portugal

Business services have been receiving increasing attention from academics, practitioners and policy-makers. Despite the growing interest, this field of research suffers from several limitations: it draws mostly on services marketing theory, and it is grounded mostly in monadic and dyadic studies. This paper contributes to the advance of business services research by addressing these limitations with regard to a specific service-related issue. We carry out an interdisciplinary study by integrating among others an industrial network approach (INA) into the services area, and we thus develop the research at a network level by adopting a services network perspective; furthermore, the study is carried out in a business-to-business context by looking into a health cluster: the Health Cluster Portugal. The article addresses one particular aspect of business services networks: their emergence. We propose a conceptual framework that draws on process-based research and integrates theories from other bodies of research, allowing a rich understanding of how a business service network is created. Our findings point to discontinuities along the emergence of such networks, showing that there is an iterative process underlying their formation, with different theories playing a predominant explanatory role at different stages. This paper contributes to the wider body of literature on services research by promoting the integration of the INA and other process-related approaches in the area of business services networks, and also provides practitioners and policy-makers with a structured framework to understand how an intentional ‘bottom–up’ business service network may be created or orchestrated.     

Sense-making and management in business networks — some observations, considerations, and a research agenda

Business networks are complex webs of interdependent exchange relationships within which companies and individual managers operate. They consist of manifold actors, complex interactions, as well as organizational structures and resource transformation processes. Business managers cannot just capitulate vis-à-vis this complexity. Making sense of complex business networks helps managers to understand their own position, as well as their available options for change. Similarly, research in the area of sense-making and management in business networks may help us understand how managers cope with the contextual complexity in business networks, and how managers construct the forms in which this complexity appears. This paper identifies six major research themes that need to be taken up in the future with regard to sense-making and management in business networks, and discusses some methodological issues to advance our knowledge in this area.     

Change processes in open innovation networks – Exploring living labs

Examining change in business networks can illuminate how time, temporality and process unfold and engage different stakeholders in open innovation. Living labs are increasingly popular open innovation networks that provide a fruitful area in which to study change processes and their influencing factors in network dynamics. We adopt a longitudinal process perspective to analyze eight living labs focused on urban development in a Northern European city. Our analysis reveals six pertinent processes: (i) expansion, (ii) reinforcement, (iii) focusing, (iv) unification, (v) termination, and (vi) recurrence. These processes reflect change in networks characterized by diverse actors, the coexistence of individual and shared motives, a high degree of openness, and user involvement. The identified change processes are a result of living labs disclosing their needs, data, and operations to their stakeholders. We propose a theoretical concept, which we describe as “network boosters”, to illustrate the factors that foster change processes. Scholars and practitioners of innovation management can learn from these findings that understanding change in open innovation networks may help to depict and predict short- and long-term relationships, and it may assist them in managing innovation in open environments.     

Customer referencing as business actor engagement behavior – Creating value in and beyond triadic settings

The rising impact of customer engagement is increasingly evident in business markets. This paper studies customer referencing as an important manifestation of engagement behavior in the business-to-business (B2B) context. To extend extant research, which has thus far examined referencing almost exclusively from the seller's viewpoint, we study how referencing affects value creation in business networks. We explore resources contributed and gained though referencing and the resulting value outcomes for the entire reference triad (the seller, the reference customer, and the prospective buyer). Empirically, the paper draws on an extensive field study conducted in knowledge-intensive business service industries. The results explicate how customer referencing affects value creation within and beyond the triad, by i) enhancing or impairing actors' internal processes; ii) strengthening or damaging relationships between the triad actors; and iii) facilitating exchange in their broader business network. The paper contributes to research on customer referencing by explicating its role in value creation on a network level. As one of the first studies on engagement in the B2B context, this paper contributes to the emerging actor engagement research by analyzing how influencing behavior operates in a business network. These insights can help firms to facilitate exchange in complex markets.     

Time and process in business network research

This Special Issue of Industrial Marketing Management brings together a range of articles by authors who have undertaken the difficult task of researching time and process in business networks. Understanding interaction processes within a business relationship and network perspective requires the elaboration of time, the central construct by which humans grasp and comprehend change. As an introduction to the articles we present the concept of human time and delineate accordingly three methodological approaches available for the study of network processes. We also introduce the authors' contributions to the special issue that broadly divide into two groups: those that deal with methodological issues concerning the study of processes in business networks and those that consider the role of time and timing for studying business processes.     

International research teams as analysts of industrial business networks

This paper analyzes case studies in the context of industrial business networks, and in particular from the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group) perspective. Two features have been prominent in this research tradition: collaboration in international research teams and interest in business between international customers and their suppliers. Still, researchers seldom discuss the challenges with the international aspects of the research team (as the subject of study) or of the business relations (as the object of study). This paper shows the complications of analyzing international business relations, namely, relations that cross national boundaries, and investigates how an international research team can tackle the challenges of international business network studies. The key contributions are, firstly, to indicate the lack of attention on the methodological requirements and opportunities that the international features create for the analysis of business networks and, secondly, to investigate how collaboration in an international research team may advance the analysis of both international industrial marketing relations and broader business networks.     

Critical success factors in coopetition: Evidence on a business network

Coopetition in the literature of business networks has been discussed as a base strategy to potentiate competitiveness. This research investigates the main inter-relationship factors among the companies that are part of a network involving cooperation and competition, as well as their relationship in coopetition. This research discusses these questions through a review of the literature on coopetition and its application in business networks, basing the analysis on the critical success factors (CSF). Our analysis is conducted in the gastronomic industry, obtaining results through an exploratory investigation, conducted by applying the model suggested by Petter (2014) in a business network, attesting the means of the critical success factors and their correlations on the suggested dimensions and on coopetition. The main results for the critical success factors in coopetition indicate the importance of governance to maintain business networks, of cooperation to leverage innovative competencies, and that companies that have lower competencies regarding financial resources are more engaged in cooperation.     

Interaction behaviors in business relationships and heuristics: Issues for management and research agenda

Various empirical studies have evidenced that interaction is a critical process in the development of buyer–seller relationships in business-to-business markets. Research examining the different aspects of interaction processes and the consequences of interaction in business relationships for the development of the businesses involved has tended to black-box the interaction process. Limited attention has been given to how interaction behaviors of individuals arise and the interplay between cognition and behaviors in interaction. At the same time, recent research offers some insights into the use and role of heuristics in contexts analogous to those individual actors face when they interact in business relationships. In this paper we review current research on interaction processes in business relationships as well as on heuristics in the management context and argue that focusing on heuristics used in interaction in business relationships offers valuable insights on how interaction behaviors emerge. In particular, we discuss the notion of heuristics as an “adaptive toolbox,” and how it relates to adaptations in business relationships. We also discuss implications for management and outline a future research agenda.     

Complaint management expectations: An online laddering analysis of small versus large firms

This study explores complaint management expectations in business relationships, particularly the qualities and behaviours that affect buying companies as part of the complaint handling encounter with a supplier. An exploratory empirical study uses a hard laddering approach which also allows us to compare the expectations of large and small companies to understand size-effects. The research indicates that complaining companies perceive disruptions of their supplier relationships in the context of the business network within which they are embedded, especially vis-à-vis the benefits associated with long-term supplier ties. However, these network concerns are more pronounced for large companies. Issues of effective complaint management in business-to-business settings therefore need to be addressed not just as isolated managerial activities with limited benefits for the parties involved, but should be seen as being part of a wider activity set of strategic networking activities with an impact on whole business systems. Thus, the findings enrich the existing limited stock of knowledge on the context of complaint management in business relationships and networks.