Change and transformation of networks and relationships — Fundamental aspects of business reality

The phenomenon of the international Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group (IMP Group) is, that despite the fact that it is informal in character, it has been possible to build close and lasting relationships between many researchers from all continents who have been developing their research over the last 40 years.The research carried out in the beginning by the IMP Group was very phenomenon-driven in character. Researchers associated with the IMP Group were linked because they viewed companies as being a network of interdependent entities and this view was commonly described in literature as the IMP network approach. Change is a fundamental assumption embedded in the network approach. Changes occurring in networks are caused by interdependency, interactions and mutual adaptation.The issue of change and transformation is important not only due to the aforementioned nature of the IMP network approach, but also due to the need to take into consideration new phenomena appearing and/or gaining strength in the context of company networks, technological changes facilitating the development of direct relationships on the business to consumer market, the change in the behaviour of a range of market leaders, based upon vertical integration, a change in the position of entities, which to-date have been peripheral within the network (e.g. subcontractors), the development of technology and global communication networks influencing a firm's ties within the internationalisation process, ever-growing competition drives the need to look for the actual impact of the overall relationships of a company on its economic performance. Referring to these issues this article serves to announce the 32nd Annual IMP Conference that will be held in Poznań, Poland, this year where discussion will focus on change and transformation of networks and relationships.     

An interactive perspective on business in practice and business in theory

For nearly a quarter of a century researchers engaged in business exchange have met on the annual IMP Conferences to share their experiences, with the phenomenon of interaction and business relationships; its sources, content and effect for the larger business landscape. This special issue’s selection of papers from the 2008 IMP Conference gives a nice illustration of the width and depth in this research. The issue includes considerations of interdependencies in dyadic business relationships, in connected business relationships and among business and non-business organizations. Finally, it includes a discussion of the emergences of research communities like IMP, and stresses the importance of the organically emerging interaction among researchers representing both similar and dissimilar theoretical and empirical interpretations of the dynamics of the business landscape.     

Charting the reach and contribution of IMP literature in other disciplines: A bibliometric analysis

The acknowledgement of a research tradition by other disciplines shows its contribution to the development of the broader body of scientific knowledge. This paper investigates the contribution of IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) research to broader research disciplines by analyzing how researchers within and beyond IMP have cited core IMP articles. First, through quantitative bibliometric analysis, the paper identifies the diffusion to other research disciplines. Thereafter, through qualitative analysis, the impact of the IMP perspective is captured to understand how strong these imprints are. The analyses show that IMP research has been noticed among a range of adjacent research disciplines. However, the use of IMP references has generally been rudimentary, and without a deeper understanding of the IMP ontology, meaning that IMP still has some “weak ties” to the other disciplines. Establishing IMP's contribution through enduring imprints would need further engagement with researchers from other research disciplines and publications in top journals. The paper contributes empirically with how the IMP perspective has spread beyond the IMP Group and theoretically by adding insight into how research ideas travel and transform to other disciplines.     

Normal vs spectacular science: The IMP Group and BtoB marketing

This paper endeavours to track the underlying scientific process driving research activities and output. It takes research in the business-to-business field as the empirical setting and puts the works of the IMP Group into focus, using bibliometric analyses and historical vistas as background evidence. We argue that what may appear at first sight as a limited development should rather, in fact, be interpreted as “normal science,” i.e. based on the robustness of the core models and conceptual framework, with fine adjustments of these taking place over time. Indeed, the BtoB realm—and in particular the activities and production of the IMP Group and associated researchers—would seem to contrast rather radically with the broader area of marketing in that it benefits from a resistant conceptual framework which seems to have weathered the test of time, and which can be used as a building block for research development and is less sensitive to managerial trends and fashion.     

The impact of globalization on networks and relationship dynamics

The largest grouping in the world of B2B researchers meets annually for the IMP Conference. Just like the Olympic torch, IMP brings like minded researchers together from across the world to share, refine and then disseminate ideas. The selection is discussed here of each of the eleven papers (some provocative) under the theme of: "The Impact of Globalisation on Networks and Relationship Dynamics". This brings up to the present day the global reality of dynamic markets and the change, adaptations and modifications that then often follow as a result.     

Platforms,systems competition,and innovation: Reassessing the foundations of communications policy

Focusing on the effects of policy on investment and innovation this paper examines whether the conceptual foundations of sector regulation are aligned with the current technological and economic conditions of advanced communications. One conclusion is that the prevailing theories and practices are only adequate if the policy challenge can be reasonably approximated as a static or steady-state problem but they may have serious shortcomings if this is not possible. The article proceeds with a review and critical examination of two approaches that could augment or possibly replace the traditional approach under conditions of dynamic competition—the theory of platform markets and systems approaches. Both frameworks model aspects of competition in interconnected systems in more detail and offer novel insights to inform communications policy in an era of continuous change. Nonetheless, important theoretical and implementation gaps remain that will require additional efforts by researchers and practitioners.     

IMP and service-dominant logic: Divergence, convergence and development

This article arose directly from discussions at the 2nd Otago Forum on Service-Dominant (S-D) logic held at the University of Otago in December 2008. It builds on the papers presented and discussions at the forum, on previous papers within the S-D logic field and relates these to the research of the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) Group. The article focuses on two important conceptual issues that appear to need further development by both S-D logic and IMP researchers: Firstly, the identity and characteristics of the business actor in an interacted business landscape and second, the nature of value and its creation and delivery. The article also seeks to use some IMP ideas on business interaction in an attempt to refine and clarify the central S-D logic concept of ‘service’ between companies. Finally, the article attempts throughout to draw tentative conclusions about the implications of this conceptual analysis for practitioners.     

The principle of the conservation of business relationship energy: or many kinds of new beginnings

The relationship termination phase has received rather less attention in the literature than other aspects of relationship development. In this article we focus on the stage when the firms involved stop doing business with each other. We argue that relationship ending is problematic in that, even when trading stops, there still seems to exist a kind of “relationship energy” which continues on, especially in the social bonds that have been created. We propose a new principle of the “conservation of relationship energy” which states that it cannot be destroyed and that it can only be transformed and transferred to other relationships, manifesting itself in a variety of ways. “Relationship energy” provides opportunities for the same relationship to be reactivated at a later time, and helps or hinders the formation and continuation of other relationships as this energy travels with people to other organizations and contexts. The principle is illustrated using three case studies of relationships that have ended, drawn from the IMP2 database. The analysis provides new ways of analyzing the relationship termination phase as a more dynamic ongoing process and suggests new ways of evaluating relationship outcomes.     

Critically evaluating the IMP research contribution

The IMP Group established itself as a loose, informal and eclectic and research group spread across Europe initially that wished to be independent and had little respect for professors. They wanted funding but not to be pursued for progress reports. They wished to challenge all basic assumptions long taken for granted and sought to test them empirically. In this respect, they were eccentric but also effective. Yet some of the priorities with which they started, have, over time, fallen somewhat by the wayside such as the work on internationalisation. Interaction, networks and adaptation continue to receive attention but less is paid to internationalisation and yet this together with the notion of repeated transactions to be viewed now as relationships and the practice of investing in customers formed part of the ground breaking five country study which made the IMP brand first known. The explanatory power of this IMP interaction model and its use of case studies was new and exciting and led to academic and practitioner reflection on what was actually taking place within end use sectors, which constituted yet another IMP contribution to knowledge. Overall, IMP has been concerned with the longer term perspective not the issues that needed quick solutions but the strategic issues in this real dynamic world in which we live, where change is ever present. IMP has established a tradition of challenging, investigating, sharing and discussing findings and it places a priority on its doctoral consortium as a means of ensuring that these streams of consciousness will remain before us all for years to come.     

Managing in conflict: How actors distribute conflict in an industrial network

IMP researchers have examined conflict as a threat to established business relationships and commercial exchanges, drawing on theories and concepts developed in organization studies. We examine cases of conflict in relationships from the oil and gas industry's service sector, focusing on conflicts of interest and resources, and conflict as experienced by actors. Through a comparative case study design, we propose an explanation of how actors manage conflict and manage in conflict given that they tend to value and maintain relationships beyond episodes of exchange. We consider conflicts in relationships from a network perspective, showing that actors experienced these while adapting to changes in their business setting, modifying their roles in that network. By identifying conflict with the organizing forms of relationship and network, we show how actors formulate conflict through pursuing and combining a number of strategies, distributing the conflict across an enlarged network.     

An exploration of the ‘dark side’ associations of conflict,power and dependence in customer–supplier relationships

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from a critical literature review of the ‘dark side’ issues related to three constructs, namely conflict, power and dependence, in customer–supplier relationships. Previous research has focused on discrete characteristics that influence relationships, but there is a paucity of research that considers the intertwining of a set of characteristics that may create darker associations or consequences for relationships. The paper contributes to IMP literature through this investigation of darker associations of relationships as much of the previous literature on customer–supplier relationship development has been concerned with building trust, developing commitment or managing long-term goals and mutuality (IMP Group, 1982).The paper considers the research on conflict, power and dependence in relationships, tracing its development from January 1980 to the end of 2014, and assessing the dark side issues raised in previous research, placing particular emphasis on ‘asymmetric’ customer–supplier relationships.The contribution of the paper lies in its critique of this focused body of literature and in the development of a better understanding for future IMP researchers on the derivations, foundations and findings concomitant to the ‘dark side’ of conflict, power and dependence in customer–supplier relationships. The paper proposes themes and future avenues of research related to the dark side of conflict, power and dependence, placing emphasis on the ‘bi-polarity’ of each relationship characteristic, the dynamics of relational benefits, the consequences of their evolution on inter-organizational trust and its impact on the dark side of relationships. Hence, the paper contributes through the identification of potential research areas and propositions to guide future conceptual developments in the field.     

Factors influencing the relative importance of marketing strategy creativity and marketing strategy implementation effectiveness

It seems logical that performance is maximized when a business produces a creative marketing strategy and achieves marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. However, cultural tensions and resource competition may make it difficult, or impossible, to achieve both. Contingency theory suggests that market and/or firm level influences may exist that make one or the other more important. Thus, it is important for researchers to investigate those conditions so that we can provide managers with guidance regarding where to allocate their resources. The study reported in this article assesses the impact that environmental conditions and business unit strategy have on the relative importance of marketing strategy creativity and marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. We discuss implications for managers and scholars.     

Academic brands and their impact on scientific endeavour: The case of business market research and researchers

This paper examines the significance of the rapid development of so-called “academic brands” in Marketing for the process of academic research and for the work and the careers of researchers: It focuses on the specific case of business market research and researchers. The paper starts by exploring the ideas behind the development of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) and its impact on the academic community: CCT appears as an emblematic case of branding of an academic community. The paper then discusses the rapid emergence of the Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) as a case of branding which has a direct impact on business market research. The paper then relates the emergence of these two “brands” to developments in business market research and more specifically to the development of IMP as a brand. Finally, the paper draws some conclusions about the role of academic branding and its impact on scientific endeavour with emphasis on the future of business marketing research and researchers.     

Beyond research method to research collaboration: Research co-production relationships with practitioners

The IMP 2018 Conference theme “From Business to Research and Back Again”, highlights the importance of academic research providing and effectively communicating findings that have value for non-academic communities. This paper argues that engaged and reciprocal research relationships with the business community can provide this value. The traditional character of a relationship between the academic researcher and the “researched” is one where researchers dictate the terms of the research, i.e. they choose what topics to consider and to try to get funding for, the modes of investigating, and ways findings are gathered, interpreted and communicated. Extending a recently-published book of readings about doing research WITH managers (Freytag & Young, 2018), the work of a number of the contributors is used as a basis for an argument that increased value is created and greater relevance is achieved by deeper forms of reciprocal research collaboration with business and government practitioners. The foundations of this kind of win-win research collaboration include epistemological compatibility, solid theoretical grounding, relevant research practices and systematic co-evaluation that are geared to specific collaborative settings. The resulting research can better advance not only practice-related knowledge but also the theoretical and empirical knowledge of business academia. This is illustrated with examples of several projects and programmes where research is effectively co-produced and benefits accrue to all.     

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.     

Perspectives on regional innovation policy – From new economic geography towards the IMP approach

The European Union has the aim of becoming the world's most competitive and knowledge-based economy, which entails investments in industry agglomeration. However, these investments have had limited impact. This conceptual paper problematizes the new economic geography terminology used in policy and, more specifically, the way that the key concepts of “industry agglomeration,” “social capital,” “knowledge,” and “innovation” are conceptualized. By adding the perspective of the industrial network or industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) approach, this paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how to facilitate innovation within regional policy. Since the IMP approach offers an organizational-level perspective, including such a perspective will help make the EU's policies more practically applicable. We propose that regional policy should pay more attention to the socio-material resource interaction between the actors involved in the cluster initiatives. This would shift the focus away from creating spillover effects of knowledge towards viewing knowledge as a performative construct that is inseparable from the specific resource interaction in which it is embedded. Also, the definition of innovation within policy could benefit from being reconceptualized as the processual use within producer–user relationships.     

A NICE agenda for IMP research

The IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) Group has engaged in a number of interesting developments in the past few years. Particularly adventurous have been the agendas of ‘pictures’ and sense-making and of time. In this paper we argue that borrowing and combining contemporary foci within social science on narratives, identity, culture and epoché temporality (for which we use the acronym N.I.C.E) allows the construction of an approach that can integrate these IMP agendas into a new research direction for the group that will keep it at the leading edge of marketing research. The purpose of our paper is to introduce and integrate discursive and temporal elements into the understanding and research of business networks to develop a more dynamic and hermeneutic approach. Our purpose is to provide a contribution to the field in exploring how identities are formed within business networks through narrative episodes in interconnecting relationships over time. We bring together all of the elements of a NICE agenda in an attempt to provide an integrative, ‘multi-lens’ theory of business networks focussed within the IMP research tradition. In doing so, we construct meaning as itself networked; sense-making involves relating presently narrated episodes to symbolic and material aspects of other narrative network episodes and events through emplotment and storying.     

Opening the network: Bridging the IMP tradition and other research perspectives

This paper introduces the theme of this Special Issue, that brings together some of the most significant papers presented at the 2006 Industrial Marketing & Purchasing (IMP) Group Conference. By proposing “opening the network” as the conference theme, our ambition was to provide a forum for new perspectives, alternative research methods and new empirical contexts, and so help IMP scholarship to continue evolving. After some preliminary remarks, we briefly introduce the papers and their contribution to the theme of this Special Issue. A first group of studies stimulates reflection in the field by contrasting IMP scholarship with ideas and points of view developed in related fields of inquiry. The second group, on the other hand, may be seen as an endogenous development of IMP scholarship, while the third group represents a response to a critique often addressed at the markets-as-networks approach: its dearth of managerial relevance.     

Paradoxes and guanxi dilemmas in emerging Chinese-Western intercultural relationships

Three paradoxes have been revealed in the study of business networks by Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) researchers. These are: seeking opportunities and then facing limitations, influencing others and yet being influenced in turn, and controlling and yet being out of control in network situations. These paradoxes have previously received little critical evaluation. This article investigates these paradoxes through in depth interviews with twenty-two business managers in Chinese-Western intercultural relationships. Three specific dilemmas relating to the fundamental Chinese cultural principle of guanxi are revealed. These dilemmas are: dilemmas between strong personal ties (guanxi) and weak personal ties, dilemmas between previous understandings and new learning of guanxi ties, and conflicting obligations between inner and outer circles of guanxi networks. These guanxi dilemmas occur in emerging Chinese-Western intercultural networks, irrespective of the specific cultural variations, contractual constraints, or corporate policies applying. This paper identifies a need for more acute study of guanxi cultural norms and their behavioral consequences in emerging Chinese-Western intercultural relationships, given the rise of China in the global economy.