For decades, scholars have put forward the idea that change in industrial networks depends on the relationships and networks themselves. However, models are still lacking that conceptualize the heterogeneity of relationships and networks and that show how this heterogeneity actually affects change. This paper puts forward a model suggesting that network structure—in terms of an open or closed system—and relational embeddedness together affect the ways knowledge is gained, given knowledge flow and problem solving as two sources of knowledge. Moreover, the paper proposes that this effect influences the tacitness and novelty of the knowledge gained. Additionally, network structure and gained knowledge are postulated to have an impact on two changes, the establishment of relationships and the development of technology, which take place in industrial networks. The paper advances six propositions and concludes with implications for research and practice.

The focus of this article is on discussing the foundations, conceptual development, and implications of resource interaction in inter-organizational networks. The article conceptualizes and classifies resources before discussing how resource interfaces enable to utilize, manage, and change resources. In doing so it provides a set of basic principles as to how resources interact at a network level, or how firms combine, develop, mobilize, and manage resources over time. This is in strong contrast to a focus on the acquisition, accumulation, and exchange of resources by the firm. The article further provides a comparison with two other research streams, the Resource-Based view (RBV) and the Service-Dominant logic (S-D logic), in order to better position this perspective on inter-organizational resource interaction. It concludes by discussing an agenda for further research.

This study aims to develop a more dynamic and relational view of centers of excellence (CoE) within multinational enterprises (MNEs), that is, business units with specific and highly valuable competencies and knowledge, which are transferred and leveraged by other units of the MNE. We employ a longitudinal case study to analyze how, between 1986 and 2014, an external supplier progressively became a CoE within IKEA and even improved this role, thereby becoming increasingly important for the MNE. Particularly, we develop a model linking internal (resources, competencies, and structure) and external factors (exchange volumes, interorganizational routines, mutual dependence, trust and commitment, and identities) with changed network positions, which, in turn, define the intensity and importance of a CoE's role. Thus, the elements required to establish a CoE may not originate from the MNE's core competencies, but may be extracted, recombined, and integrated externally from the MNE's global supply network.

Information technology and such business applications as IT systems create great expectations to solve most problems a company faces. However, these expectations are seldom fulfilled. This article treats IT and IT systems simply as a facility among many other resources (products, facilities, business units and relationships) in business networks. By making use of a case study centred around Product Information Assistance (PIA), one of IKEA’s key IT systems for product information administration, the analytical part extracts a series of interactions patterns between IT facilities and the surrounding resources. Being IT systems also embedded into other resources implies that

their effects seldom turn out to be as expected or simply defined by their technical potentials.

Every business builds on a specific set of resources. New businesses in particular have to assemble external resources that are mostly new to them. This resource assembly requires developing business relationships with other actors that control and can provide the needed resources. Adopting a resource interaction perspective, this paper examines a case of a new business venture in the automobile industry. The case study shows that when forming a new business the actors possess only partial knowledge of how to assemble the resources. Consequently, the actors must engage in extensive adaptation and interaction with others to enact workable resource interfaces and combinations. This necessity makes the new business formation process nonlinear and onerous. Further, the case demonstrates that new business formation is a collective process involving not only the emergence of a formal business organization but also reorganizing the applicable resource market. Since third parties involved in developing the necessary resource combinations can be considered part of the new business venture, setting the boundaries of the new venture becomes arbitrary. The arbitrary nature of such boundary setting has implications in entrepreneurship studies with regard to the unit of analysis and the concept of opportunity.

This study investigates the link between export behavior, labor productivity and R&D activities in 17,168 small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) in Austria, during the period 1995-2011. The analysis covers six subgroups of SMEs: young, old, micro, born global, manufacturing, and services. Using a two-part model controlling for firm effects, the results show that both the export participation and the export share of SMEs depend significantly and positively on the level of labor productivity (relative to that of large firms in the same industry) and the R&D-sales ratio. Another important finding is that labor productivity strengthens the relationship between R&D activities and exports. Marginal effects show a large degree of heterogeneity in the relationships across the six subgroups of SMEs. The link between R&D and export behavior, for a given level of labor productivity, is relatively pronounced for manufacturing SMEs, larger and older SMEs, while the other sub-groups are less affected.

While business networks and relationships in international and industrial marketing studies are explored extensively, relationships between firms and socio-political actors are rarely been studied. This paper addresses this gap and examines how MNCs manage their relationship with socio-political organizations. The study builds from the proposition that business firms, besides their actions in business market, have to manage their socio-political market. The study aims to develop a theoretical view that is based in business networks and contains the three concepts of legitimacy, commitment and trust. The proposition is that business firms behave proactively towards the actors in the socio-political environment which is related to their business goals. The three conceptual elements will enable us to understand more deeply the varieties in the firms' managerial behavior. Two cases test the concept in the model - those of Daewoo Motor Company (a South Korean MNC) and the Swedish MNC, Vattenfall. The study will contribute towards deeper understanding of socio-political market and how firms manage their socio-political relationships. The conclusions describe the theoretical and managerial implications.

This study investigates the effects that expatriate managers' relationships within multinationals have on reverse knowledge transfer. Specifically, drawing on agency theory, we characterize how expatriate managers' relationships with subsidiary local managers, and with headquarters' managers, influence subsidiary willingness and reverse knowledge transfer. Based on a survey of 128 subsidiaries in 73 Chinese multinationals, we show how a good-quality relationship between expatriate managers and subsidiary local managers has positive effects on subsidiary willingness, which acts as a mediator between this relationship quality and the extent of reverse knowledge transfer. The paper contributes to the international business and knowledge transfer literature by generating new insights into whether and how expatriate managers' relationships within multinationals can help reduce agency problems and support reverse knowledge transfer processes. Understanding the potential role of expatriates in relation to reverse knowledge transfer is particularly important within the context of emerging market multinationals employing knowledge-seeking strategies overseas.

     Drawing on service-dominant logic and institutional theory, this paper examines innovation as a process that unfolds through changes in the institutional arrangements that govern resource integration practices in service ecosystems. Four cases are used to illustrate the interdependent patterns of breaking, making and maintaining the institutionalized rules of resource integration occurring on multiple levels of institutional context. Such institutional work allows actors to cocreate value in novel and useful ways by a) including new actors, b) redefining roles of involved actors and c) reframing resources within service ecosystems. Our findings show that while the efforts of breaking and making the institutionalized rules are required for such changes to occur, at the same time, institutional maintenance is also important for these changes to institutionalize, that is, to become an integral part of the institutional structure coordinating value cocreation.

Researchers often use Lindblom's concept of “muddling through” to explain how complex and incremental processes can lead to satisfactory results even without the systematic application of “management”. However, this tendency to look for positive outcomes from muddling might be limiting, as this tends to ignore muddling that ends in failure. This article aims to extend the work following Lindblom by studying the failure of an innovation in engine technology. The key argument is that by paying more attention to failures, business research can develop a more complete theory of muddling through, and this article uses the case of how a new engine for lawnmowers incrementally failed to become an innovation as an illustration. In this, the term “sliding” is introduced to clarify the role of incrementalism in the processual study of business failure.

This paper examines venture capital (VC) governance in innovation processes. The VC literature often presents the relationship between a VC firm and a start-up as dyadic and analyzes it with agency theory. In contrast, this paper deploys the resource interaction framework presented in Hakansson and Waluszewski (2002) to governance and innovation in networks. The paper reports an in-depth case study of Pyrosequencing, a Swedish biotech firm financed with VC. The results from this study reveal how the relationship between a VC and a start-up company is embedded in a wider network and how the governance of the VC spreads in the surrounding network and influences a start-up's possibilities to develop organizational and technical resource interfaces to critical counterparts such as suppliers and customers.

A temporal workload model is introduced to identify the relationship between the work time and economic performance of the activities conducted by a human agent in the context of an economic organization. The model's novelty derives from the account of time perception and its consequent cognitive time distortion, the latter being understood as a discrepancy between physical and cognitive time. Current praxis, both theoretical and empirical, assumes only physical time. This assumption is challenged here through the inclusion of time perception and cognitive time distortion in estimating the temporal workload of an economic agent. This inclusion enables a novel comprehension of frequent operational challenges, such as work delays, human stress, output quality issues, and economic inefficiencies. The main contribution to the literature is a specification of a new condition that governs the performance of any economic organization where human agents conduct time assessments.

The present study advances a novel productivity function of knowledge workers. Cognitive science studies provide clear evidence that, for a given event, there is a difference between a worker's cognitive time and physical clock time; this difference gives rise to a cognitive time distortion. The proposed productivity function accounts for workers' dual experiences of time and the kinds of contracts utilized by an economic organization and its customers and workers. This function shows—for the first time and contrary to intuition—that, given certain conditions, workers' cognitive time and the form of contracts utilized are the only conditioners of knowledge worker productivity. The proposed productivity function unearths a hidden economic lever effect whereby a minor degree of time distortion generates a significant level of worker inefficiency. This constitutes a novel contribution to the literature on knowledge worker productivity.