Design And Management Of Interfirm Networks

Interfirm networks include franchising, retail and service chains, cooperatives, financial networks, joint ventures, strategic alliances, licensing, public-private partnerships and new network forms in the digital economy. This book gathers the latest research studies that approach these networks – and the creation of innovation under the conditions of a complex, dynamic, knowledge-intensive and digital economy – from an interdisciplinary perspective. The studies, all of which were written by respected experts, explore how firms can improve their competitiveness by securing access to innovation, knowledge, complementary resources and capabilities otherwise not available to them. In addition, they highlight how, driven by an unpredictable environment, firms embedded in inter-organizational networks are increasingly transforming from co-operators to collaborators and valuable co-creators of innovation.

Interfirm networks include franchising, retail and service chains, cooperatives, financial networks, joint ventures, strategic alliances, licensing, public-private partnerships and new network forms in the digital economy. This book gathers the latest research studies that approach these networks – and the creation of innovation under the conditions of a complex, dynamic, knowledge-intensive and digital economy – from an interdisciplinary perspective. The studies, all of which were written by respected experts, explore how firms can improve their competitiveness by securing access to innovation, knowledge, complementary resources and capabilities otherwise not available to them. In addition, they highlight how, driven by an unpredictable environment, firms embedded in inter-organizational networks are increasingly transforming from co-operators to collaborators and valuable co-creators of innovation.

The organization of interfirm networks, such as alliances, cooperatives, franchise and retail chains, has become an important research topic in the field of economics, marketing, strategic management, and organization theory. This book contributes to the literature on formal and informal inter-organizational governance by providing new insights on contract design, ownership, evolution of cooperation, role of social capital and performance in franchising networks; includes topics of loyalty, reputation and organizational form as well as performance of cooperatives, and discusses the relationship between formal and relational governance in alliances, governance structures of innovation activities, dynamics of interfirm conflicts, and network externalities and alliance formation.

This book focuses especially on financial and/or managerial accounting aspects of inter-firm network in three phases: (1) strategy for forming the inter-firm network; (2) management control of inter-firm network; and (3) task control of production, sales and logistics of inter-firm network.

This contributed volume focuses on the management and governance of international business networks (IBN). Specifically, the chapters refer to theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and case study papers from all areas in economics and management of IBN. These include cooperatives, franchising, retail chains, strategic alliances, public-private partnerships and new network forms in the digital economy. This book is ideal for researchers and strategists who are keen to improve their understanding of the latest developments in the field.

Collaboration of organizations reshapes traditional managerial practices and creates new inter-organizational contexts for strategy, coordination and control, information and knowledge management. Heralded as organizational forms of the future, networks are at the same time fragile and precarious organizational arrangements, which regularly fail. In order to investigate the new realities created by technology-enabled forms of network organizations and to address the emerging managerial challenges, this book introduces an integrative view on inter-firm network management. Centred on a network life cycle perspective, strategic, economic and relational facets of business networking are explored. The network management framework is illustrated onto a broad range of European inter-firm network examples in various industries rendering insights for new management practices.

This volume examines the nature of interfirm networks and their role in promoting industrial competitiveness. Where previous work in this area has tended to be descriptive, the distinguished contributors to this volume present a balanced theoretical and empirical approach to interfirm networking drawing on a variety of international case studies. I

"Academics, specifically those interested in the dynamic interaction between networks and innovation, will find this book of great interest, as will policy makers and management practitioners."--BOOK JACKET.