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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...
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Community public safety is facing great challenges in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. While helping communities identify crises and prevent risks, and improving community public safety governance, collaborative governance is changing the trends of a complex, uncertain, and ever-changing environment, and helping to drive communities toward hig...
Citations
... According to Vargo and Lusch (2016, p. 161), ecosystems include "a system of resourceintegrating actors connected by shared institutional arrangements and mutual value creation through service exchange". Thus, resource reconfiguration can be defined as the modification of a resource as an attempt by an actor to obtain benefits in response to environmental changes (Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012;Karim, 2006;Poblete, 2021). Consequently, resource reconfiguration is characterised by the adjustment and reorientation of a resource (Galunic and Rodan, 1998;Prenkert et al., 2022) to co-create new value in ecosystems. ...
Purpose
This article aims to examine how users' involvement in value co-creation influences the development and orchestration of well-being ecosystems to help tackle complex societal challenges. This research contributes to the public management literature and answers recent calls to investigate novel public service governances by discussing users' involvement and value co-creation for novel well-being solutions.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors empirically explore this phenomenon through a case study of a complex ecosystem addressing increased well-being, focussing on the formative evaluation stage of a longitudinal evaluation of Sweden's first support centre for people affected by cancer. Following an abductive reasoning and action research approach, the authors critically discuss the potential of user involvement for the development of well-being ecosystems and outline preconditions for the success of such approaches.
Findings
The empirical results indicate that resource reconfiguration of multi-actor collaborations provides a platform for value co-creation, innovative health services and availability of resources. Common themes include the need for multi-actor collaborations to reconfigure heterogeneous resources; actors' adaptive change capabilities; the role of governance mechanisms to align the diverse well-being ecosystem components, and the engagement of essential actors.
Research limitations/implications
Although using a longitudinal case study approach has revealed stimulating insights, additional data collection, multiple cases and quantitative studies are prompted. Also, the authors focus on one country but the characteristics of users' involvement for value co-creation in innovative well-being ecosystems might vary between countries.
Practical implications
The findings of this study demonstrate the value of cancer-affected individuals, with “lived experiences”, acting as sources for social innovation, and drivers of well-being ecosystem development. The findings also suggest that participating actors in the ecosystem should utilise wider knowledge and experience to tackle complex societal challenges associated with well-being.
Social implications
Policymakers should encourage the formation of well-being ecosystems with diverse actors and resources that can help patients navigate health challenges. The findings especially show the potential of starting from the user's needs and life situation when the ambition is to integrate and innovate in fragmented systems.
Originality/value
The proposed model proposes that having a user-led focus on innovating new solutions can play an important role in the development of well-being ecosystems.
... On one hand, changes to existing value activities and relationship structures as well as new actors with new value activities and relationship connections are required for innovation (Keränen et al., 2023). On the other hand, innovation development enacts changes in the structure and dynamics of the network of actors and their interactions and interdependences (Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012). As stressed by IMP studies, due to the interdependencies of relationships, a change in one relationship often spreads to other relationships through interaction, affecting the whole network. ...
Purpose
The research question is how can a company implement a circular innovation in a supply network context? Leveraging the main conceptual and interpretative models of the industrial marketing and purchasing thinking, this study aims to investigate the interplay between the process of circular innovation development and the changes in the structure and dynamics of the supply network in which innovation takes place.
Design/methodology/approach
This research applies a case study design focusing on participant interaction dynamics. The case relates to an industrial company producing an innovative coating solution for compostable packaging. The data used to develop the case study came from multiple sources but primarily from semistructured interviews that cover the implementation of the circular innovation and the configuration of the circular network.
Findings
The dynamics of interconnected relationships can configure a circular network that interconnects business and non business actors through vertical, horizontal and heterogeneous relationships. The network configuration is supported by the new mobilizer actor that facilitates the sharing of circular knowledge within the circular network, together with the sharing of a market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation within the supply network, through the educational learning path.
Originality/value
This paper aims to contribute to a new understanding of how circular innovation can be developed, adopted and diffused. In a network, when circular innovation takes place, the focal issue is not the new product or technology in itself but how such innovation is developed and implemented by and through the reconfiguration of the business and non-business relationships into circular network.
... To tackle our research question of how an entrepreneurial firm's business model is influenced by its organizational members' managerial cognition, we utilized a single case study to investigate the complexity and complicatedness of an entrepreneurial initiative (Yin, 2009), including the contextual conditions in its unique setting (Myers, 2019), within which the perceptions of involved actors were formed (Weick and Bougon, 1986). In particular, the case study allowed us to concentrate on the influences of time and temporality (Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012), which drove the developmental process of a business model underpinning an entrepreneurial initiative. ...
The survival of any entrepreneurial initiative depends on a working business model that could create value for the customers and, simultaneously, allow the firm to capture value from what has been created. Despite increased attention to business model research, the understanding of business models’ impact on entrepreneurial development is quite constrained. In particular, the question of how an entrepreneurial firm’s business model is influenced by its organizational members’ managerial cognition remains under-explored. To tackle this research question, we drew a linkage between the business model literature and a managerial cognition perspective to build the theoretical foundation. We used this theoretical lens to investigate the failure of Better Place, an Israeli entrepreneurial company that focused on its proprietary battery-swap electric vehicles. In our findings, we argued that organizational members’ managerial-cognition-based conceptual framework is critical to the business model decision-making of an entrepreneurial firm. The discrepant and strongly held conceptual framework may result in misjudgment of environmental changes, especially when emerging-market numbers in an industry are high, and consensus regarding technology innovation in an industry is still lacking. The improper conceptual framework can generate mistaken business models, which further bring about an organizational decline. It is crucial for entrepreneurial firms to learn and improve existing conceptual frameworks and consequent business models by business interaction in the initiative stage if they are to avoid failure. The research outcome paves the way for future empirical studies to contribute to machine learning in the field of cognitive automation, artificial-intelligence-driven smart manufacturing, and sustainable industrial value creation in the era of digital transformation.
... Mobilization drives the development of the socially constructed world, in the sense that it allows political, societal, and business initiatives and movements to unfold towards a desired end (Bimber, 1998;Gerhards & Rucht, 1992;Iacono & Kling, 2001;Ritvala & Salmi, 2010). Within the domain of business and management, the concept of mobilization has been employed to investigate network change and evolution by highlighting the critical role of inter-organizational relationships that permit the combination of resources and the connection of activities (Chou & Zolkiewski, 2012;Halinen et al., 1999). Extant research also has indicated that innovation, including the free software movement (Elliott & Scacchi, 2008), technological change (Chou, 2016) and service innovation (Goduscheit & Faullant, 2018), can result from boundary-crossing resource mobilization, which is influenced and guided by the mobilizer's problem-framing and agenda-setting (Möller, 2010;Snow et al., . ...
... This research design not only retained the depth of the case by providing rich descriptions (Dyer & Wilkins, 1991), but also permitted a holistic understanding (Myers, 2019). Additionally, this case study took a time perspective that allowed the dynamics created in the mobilization process to be observed (Chou & Zolkiewski, 2012), resulting in the emergence of an ecosystem. ...
Mobilization has been an important management issue in business interaction, but the role of technology in the mobilization process is little investigated, particularly with regard to the rising phenomena of platforms and ecosystems. This research attempts to explore the concept of technology-enabled mobilization by dealing with the question of how technology facilitates a mobilizing process that drives the emergence of a value co-creating ecosystem. This research question is investigated through a single case study that looked at an agricultural enterprise's business development for almost three decades, in which key stakeholders were attracted to engage in collective collaborations, resulting in an interdependency and value co-creating system. The case findings permit us to develop implications, particularly the notions of service-based and technology-enabled mobilizations.
... The static method used in studying the UEE neglected the origin and self-sustainable development process of the EE (Mason and Brown, 2014). As UEE has been in the process of development, the temporal nature of the EE is a topic that cannot be ignored (Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012;Möller, 2013;Medlin and Törnroos, 2015;Andersen and Medlin, 2016;Fonfara et al., 2016;Daniel et al., 2018). This study is carried out in a period, so it can only provide insights on one stage of the development of the UEE. ...
This study examines the factors that affect the formation and operation of the university entrepreneurship ecosystem (UEE). Employing the case-study methodology, this research attempts to provide an evidence-based analysis of the existing theoretical framework of the UEE and verify the role of elements in it through empirical experience as described in semi-structured interviews with 33 respondents on and off an American university. Findings reveal that extracurricular activities, networks, entrepreneurial culture, and leadership have an important impact on the formation and operation of the UEE. Specifically, compared with formal courses, as important carriers, extracurricular activities have a more positive impact on the entrepreneurship of students. Different levels of networks can promote the circulation and exchange of resources. Culture is an important factor in forming and promoting individual entrepreneurial behavior and their agglomeration in the UEE. Clear vision and long-term commitments to entrepreneurship, namely leadership, play a leading role in the formation and development of a UEE.
... As yet there seems to be no consensus about how these progressions manifest. It is widely acknowledged that research into business change processes and their associated dynamics is challenging (Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012) and that there is a need to consider both internal and external drivers of the change . This requires an exploration of both intra-and interorganizational relationships and thus, in addition to extant servitization literature, concepts from the field of interaction, relationships and networks research are drawn upon to support this understanding. ...
Summary: We break the concept of Industry 4.0 down into a series of technologies and look whether their adoption influences industrial firms’ servitization indicators. Likewise, we assess whether the existence of prior digital skills and training initiatives to work with the adopted technologies influence company scores on these indicators. We establish that there is a stronger influence on the development of intelligent services than on revenue generation from services.
1. INTRODUCTION
Digitalization has been hailed many times as a catalyzer for servitization. Similarly, Industry 4.0 has been portrayed as an enabler for smart service development. However, in such occasions either digitalization and/or Industry 4.0 are often referred to in generic terms or as container concepts. Rarely are they broken down into a series of constituent technologies to see their relationship with (forms of) servitization.
Therefore, in our proposed contribution we follow Gilchrist (2016) and dissect Industry 4.0 into 9 technologies that companies can apply, and look whether these have an impact on company’s servitization behaviour. We also look whether prior availability of specific (digital) skills inside the company adopting the respective technologies influences the servitization behaviour. Similarly, we look whether the companies count with a training strategy and programmes to prepare the employees for working with the technologies adopted.
We draw from a survey organized in 2019 among industrial firms from the Basque Country, which resulted in valid 271 answer sets.
2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Our work combines insights from studies that look into the concept of Industry 4.0 and servitization. Furthermore, it builds upon studies that investigate the role of skills and training for service business development amidst industrial companies (Marcos Martínez and Martín Peña, 2016).
Industry 4.0 refers to a family of technologies that entail the use and coordination of information, automation, computation and sensing activities (Acatech 2015; Posada et al. 2015).
Servitization refers both to industrial firms expanding their service business and income from services (Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988) and to their attempts of sophisticating or making their service offering more advanced (Baines and Lightfoot, 2013).
Skills crafting and training for service business is an area that has been approached from a knowledge development angle (Maglio and Spohrer, 2008) and a competence shaping perspective (Barile and Saviano, 2013) with regards to servitization behaviour.
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
We process data from a large-scale survey drawn from 271 industrial firms. As independent variables we look at: the adoption of 9 technologies that correspond to Gilchrist’s (2016) categorization of Industry 4.0. Similarly, we enquire after the existence of prior digital skills to work with the adopted technologies in the company, and whether the company counts with a training strategy and/or programme to allow employees getting to grips with the implemented technologies. As dependent variables, regarding servitization behaviour, we look at income generation from services and the development of intelligent services as a consequence of the adoption of the respective technologies. We control for company size in terms of number of employees and annual turnover.
We formulate corresponding hypotheses and test these by means of hierarchical logistic regressions.
4. FINDINGS
We find that certain technologies are more likely to boost the servitization of business than others. In addition, we find that the uptake of Industry 4.0 technologies is more likely to foster the development of intelligent services than the generation of income from services.
Alternatively, Industry 4.0 technologies seem to have more impact on the “smartization of services” than on the “servitization of revenues”. This also leads us to think that the offering of intelligent services requires more technology, or are more technology-intensive, than services in general.
As for the relevance of available skills and training schemes, we find that the implementation of training strategies for the right utilization of new technologies raises the chances of companies developing intelligent services.
5. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
The findings show that developing services is one thing, but that charging for them is another thing. This may hint at industrial companies having difficulties of shifting from “services for free” to “services for a fee” or that they tend to offer integrated “product service offerings” or “package deals”, where the service part is not charged or accounted for separately.
They also provide insights on the relevance of skills development for exploiting Industry 4.0 technologies for the sake of servitization.
Finally, the study raises questions around how to conceptualize and measureservitization behaviour. I.e., depending on the way that servitization behaviour is measured, its determinants could vary to a great extent.
... However, the understanding of how members are bound and how these bounds shift, that is to say their proximity dynamics, is crucial. At a meso-level, networks evolve, structure themselves, or peter out depending on members' ties (Ahuja, Soda, and Zaheer 2012;Chou and Zolkiewski 2012;Orlikowski and Joanne 2002). At a micro-level, these ties between members directly influence the beginning, the development and the end of cross-members' collaborations (Lowe and Michel 2018). ...
... The analysis of networks is inherently a dynamic process (Balland, Boschma, and Frenken 2015;Balland, Vaan, and Boschma 2012;Chou and Zolkiewski 2012;Gilly and Torre 2000), even though much of the research on the topic has been static. These dynamic systems are considered as constellations of organisations that come together through social and economic ties (Barringer and Harrison 2000). ...
... Adopting a processual approach involves integrating into studies the notion of time (Lowe and Michel 2018;Chou and Zolkiewski 2012) and its individual experience through the notions of events, cycles and routines (Lowe and Michel 2018). Chou and Zolkiewski (2012) suggest the analysis of events or 'milestones events' to evaluate processes and temporal fluidity within networks. ...
This article looks at the collaboration relations of CEOs during
different phases of the integration process into a network by
using various proximity dimensions. Based on the life narratives of
21 CEO members belonging to a regional network, our study underlines
that three integration phases exist, within which different
proximity forms are mobilised. Whereas, institutional, personal
and social proximities are significant during the entry phase, temporary
geographical and cognitive proximities appear to be essential
for building collaboration. Moreover, if social and personal
dimensions play essential roles in starting collaborations, we note
that social proximity remains less decisive for joint collaborative
projects. These results enrich recent debates about the dimensions
of proximity. They open lines of thinking about ways to encourage
the integration of new members.
... From that vantage point, earlier research (Cespedes and Poblete, 2019;Garc ıa-Canal et al., 2014;Goerzen, 2007;Gulati, 1995;Poblete and Bengtson, 2020a, b) has revealed that organizations repeatedly enter into partnerships with previous collaborators and that such recurring partnerships can benefit firms. In particular, as Chou and Zolkiewski (2012) have posited, reconstituting a past relationship can be a strategic option for renewing a firm's pool of resources. ...
... While reconstituting interorganizational relationships can be viewed as a process occurring between companies as they resume working together after a breach in their relationship (Poblete and Bengston, 2020a, b;Westphal et al., 2006), resource transformation can be defined as an organization's modification of a resource in order to gain benefits in response to changes in the business environment (Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012;Karim, 2006;Karim and Capron, 2016;Powell et al., 2001;Wu and Wang, 2007). Transforming resources when reconstituting a past relationship differs noticeably from transforming them when entering into a completely new relationship, because the principal characteristics of reconstitution stemming from earlier business exchanges with the former partner are nonexistent with new and unfamiliar partners (Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012). ...
... While reconstituting interorganizational relationships can be viewed as a process occurring between companies as they resume working together after a breach in their relationship (Poblete and Bengston, 2020a, b;Westphal et al., 2006), resource transformation can be defined as an organization's modification of a resource in order to gain benefits in response to changes in the business environment (Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012;Karim, 2006;Karim and Capron, 2016;Powell et al., 2001;Wu and Wang, 2007). Transforming resources when reconstituting a past relationship differs noticeably from transforming them when entering into a completely new relationship, because the principal characteristics of reconstitution stemming from earlier business exchanges with the former partner are nonexistent with new and unfamiliar partners (Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012). In the latter, the firms often lack knowledge about one another (Dekker and Van den Abbeele, 2010), trust and commitment are often low (Mohr and Spekman, 1994), uncertainty is often high (Beckman et al., 2004;Abdi and Aulakh, 2017) and there are not previous relationship-specific resources (e.g. ...
Purpose
Adopting aspects of the resource-based perspective and interorganizational relational dynamics, this paper examines the notion of resource transformation in the reconstitution of broken interorganizational relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
Following a qualitative approach, the research involved four in-depth case studies of buyer–supplier relationships among 12 Scandinavian manufacturing firms.
Findings
The results suggest that reconstituting broken interorganizational relationships, whether overlooked or underutilized, can pose important consequences for resource transformations. To adapt in dynamic environments, firms use resources in new combinations, and various relationship-specific resources may be difficult, if not impossible, to transform independent of the reconstitution process. Such resource transformations can occur when competencies in reconstituting interorganizational relationships are combined to synthesize novel resources or recombined with other resources. Four identified types of resource transformations in reconstitution processes – in production facilities, products, human know-how and coordination of interorganizational collaboration – can occur in each firm and/or in the interorganizational relationship.
Research limitations/implications
Although the explorative multiple-case study approach afforded novel insights, the findings have no representative or generalizable implications in any positivist sense and thus warrant careful interpretation. Nevertheless, they make important contributions to the literature and illuminate promising avenues for future research, which should involve additional data collection and quantitative studies.
Practical implications
As firms reconstitute broken interorganizational relationships, the transformation of their resources can provide new, expected resources capable of generating substantial benefits.
Originality/value
This paper fills an identified gap in research regarding how reconstituting broken interorganizational relationships influence the transformation of resources. The paper provides new conceptual and empirical insights as well as makes several contributions to the literature on the topic.
... Interorganizational network evolution can be incremental, radical, gradual, rapid, proactive or reactive (EINR1). Incremental evolution involves adjustments within ongoing business relationships and radical evolution involves changes in entire relationships leading to addition, termination and substitution of partners, causing business network enlargement, shrinkage and consolidation (Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012;Degbey and Pelto, 2013;Dittrich et al., 2007;Guercini and Milanesi, 2019;Halinen et al., 1999;Kamp, 2005;Knoben et al., 2006;Rosenkopf and Tushman, 1998). Some interorganizational networks evolve gradually, but in many networks, evolution may be more dynamic (Degbey and Pelto, 2013;Gulati et al., 2000). ...
... technologies (Lin et al., 2010;Low and Johnston, 2009;Madhavan et al., 1998;Rosenkopf and Padula, 2008;Rosenkopf and Tushman, 1998;Venkatraman and Lee, 2004); competitive environment (Gimeno, 2004;Kamp, 2005;Koza and Lewin, 1998;Larson, 1992;Liu and Brookfield, 2000;Madhavan and Gnyawali, 2004;Sytch and Tatarynowicz, 2014); the legal and social climate; economic life cycle; and industry life cycle (Dennis, 2005;Hynes and Wilson, 2012;Kumar and Nti, 1998;Lavie and Singh, 2012;O' Farrell and Wood, 1999;Ozcan, 2018) that causes existing network structures to become ineffective or inappropriate to achieve strategic objectives, inducing the need for the focal firm to develop their network to survive and grow (Castro et al., 2014;Chou and Zolkiewski, 2012;Davenport and Miller, 2000;Dittrich et al., 2007;Haider and Mariotti, 2016;Koza and Lewin, 1999). ...
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the available insights regarding interorganizational network evolution. The research questions being addressed are as follows: What is the nature of interorganizational network evolution? And what causes interorganizational network evolution? The review hence focuses on the nature of interorganizational network evolution (at the ego-network level and whole-network level) and the causes of interorganizational network evolution (firm-related causes and environmental causes). This paper highlights relevant gaps in the existing literature on interorganizational network evolution while outlining a research agenda by identifying key research questions and issues requiring further scholarly contributions to stimulate research in this field.
Design/methodology/approach - An extensive review of scholarly peer-reviewed English language journal articles was conducted in the subject areas of economics, sociology, business and management (including entrepreneurship) while excluding articles in the domain areas of computer science that dealt with computer networks and the health field that addressed neural networks to obtain articles on interorganizational network evolution for the period 1970-2019. Various journal databases such as EBSCO, ScienceDirect (Elsevier), Emerald, JSTOR and ABI/INFORM and Ebook Central on ProQuest were used to extract relevant articles using specific keywords.
Findings - To better understand this phenomenon of interorganizational network evolution, there is a need for future studies to focus on the less researched areas such as the "nature of evolution" of EINR1, EINR3 and EINR4 and the "causes of evolution" of FRC3, FRC5, FRC7 and FRC8. Further, over the years, in comparison to the evolution of interorganizational network relationships (EINR), fewer works have considered the evolution of overall interorganizational network structure (EINS). The research studies on environmental causes (EC) have been less in number in comparison to firm related causes (FRC), and this could be an area for further research. Also, studies on interorganizational network evolution have not examined the impact of FRC1 on EINR 3 and only a few studies have examined the impact of FRC1 on EINR1 and EINR4. Less attention has been given to the impact of FRC2 on EINR1, EINR3, EINR4 and EINS. Additionally, the impact of FRC3 on EINR1, EINR3 and EINS needs more in-depth examination. The impact of FRC4 on EINR4; FRC5 on EINR1, EINR2 and EINR4; FRC6 on EINR1 and EINS; and FRC7 and FRC8 on all forms of "nature of interorganizational network evolution" requires more research work. Finally, the impact of EC on EINR3 and EINR4 is also a less researched stream in the literature needing more scholarly contribution to better understand the phenomenon under consideration in this study. Some of the least explored theoretical lenses and relevant questions that can be addressed using these lenses to advance research on network evolution have also been discussed.
Originality/value - The main contribution of this paper is that it provides a comprehensive literature review, collating the dispersed knowledge on interorganizational network evolution-nature of evolution and causes of evolution, identifying areas that require further research attention for the development of this domain.
... The extant literature presents scant evidence about network reconfiguration in R&D networks. Chou and Zolkiewski (2012) analyse a case in the optical recording media industry and conclude that technological change drives the evolution of the focal net. In the case studied, the network reconfiguration is triggered by technological change and not orchestrated by a hub firm. ...
Although R&D networks have been increasingly used by companies to foster innovation through collaboration, there are still challenges regarding how to successfully orchestrate such projects. The goal of this study is to analyse how a hub firm orchestrates an R&D network through collaborative practices. We based our study on the three orchestration subprocesses proposed by Dhanaraj and Parkhe, namely, to foster knowledge mobility, guarantee innovation appropriability, and maintain network stability. To achieve our goal, we analysed the collaborative practices in an R&D network in the semiconductor industry in France. The case consists of an R&D network among 26 companies to create a new transistor. The data include 65 interviews and 192 documents. The study contributes to the literature on network orchestration by showing that specific collaborative practices performed by a hub firm enable a fourth orchestration subprocess—network reconfiguration—which is necessary in long‐lasting and complex R&D networks and also affects the other three subprocesses. Network reconfiguration consists in disassociating and attracting new members to the R&D network to cover knowledge demands, and is performed by the hub‐firm through specific collaborative practices. The results can benefit practitioners by showing which collaborative practices may be useful for a hub firm throughout the development of an R&D network.
