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This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

The study here examines how business actors adapt to changes in networks by analyzing their perceptions or their network pictures. The study is exploratory or iterative in the sense that revisions occur to the research question, method, theory, and context as an integral part of the research process.

Changes within networks receive less research attention, although considerable research exists on explaining business network structures in different research traditions. This study analyzes changes in networks in terms of the industrial network approach. This approach sees networks as connected relationships between actors, where interdependent companies interact based on their sensemaking of their relevant network environment. The study develops a concept of network change as well as an operationalization for comparing perceptions of change, where the study introduces a template model of dottograms to systematically analyze differences in perceptions. The study then applies the model to analyze findings from a case study of Norwegian/Japanese seafood distribution, and the chapter provides a rich description of a complex system facing considerable pressure to change. In-depth personal interviews and cognitive mapping techniques are the main research tools applied, in addition to tracer studies and personal observation.

The dottogram method represents a valuable contribution to case study research as it enables systematic within-case and across-case analyses. A further theoretical contribution of the study is the suggestion that network change is about actors seeking to change their network position to gain access to resources. Thereby, the study also implies a close relationship between the concepts network position and the network change that has not been discussed within the network approach in great detail.

Another major contribution of the study is the analysis of the role that network pictures play in actors' efforts to change their network position. The study develops seven propositions in an attempt to describe the role of network pictures in network change. So far, the relevant literature discusses network pictures mainly as a theoretical concept. Finally, the chapter concludes with important implications for management practice.

The authors argue that the construction industry is characterised by a fragmented business context with three main features: the project-based character, the strong focus on price in all parts of the supply chain along with the great importance of suppliers. This fragmentation has been identified as problematic for the industry’s ability to innovate and engage in renewal. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this further by focusing on how construction companies manage renewal in a fragmented business context.

The authors use an in-depth case study of a housing project in Sweden to discuss how firms manage renewal in a fragmented type of business environment. The authors identify the challenge of achieving renewal in an individual construction company as an issue of handling intra- and inter-organisational issues in both intra- and inter-project environments.

The case study indicates that renewal can be partly handled and managed through long-term business relationships and partly through opening up to new business relationships. Moreover, innovations and learning developed in other projects can be used in the focal project, and due to a repetitive task it is possible for the construction company to use a core network of individuals and organisations to enhance overall renewal among actors.

The study needs to be supported by further empirical observations. The paper encourages IMP scholars to further investigate projects from an industrial network approach.

The study shows that the internal resources of firms can be used systematically to create continuity in a multi-project organisation, and that relationships can be used to bridge learning and innovation among actors across projects.

The paper addresses why firms in fragmented (project-based) businesses might struggle with achieving renewal in a novel way by outlining and investigating four organisational challenges they must handle.

This paper aims to refine conceptual treatment of the social facet in business relationships and reinforce its significance in the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) research tradition by integrating the concept of social capital in its original interpretation into the actor-resource-activity (ARA) model.

The paper begins by indicating some typical conceptual challenges associated with application of social capital in IMP. This is followed by a conceptual clarification that explores the origin and the essence of social capital in economic sociology. Finally, the paper proposes integrating social capital in its original interpretation into IMP’s ARA model and presents four propositions on how social capital is created in interaction between business actors.

The paper shows how bridging Bourdieu’s theory of social capital with the IMP approach may solve the identified conceptual challenges. This paper’s main contribution is a cyclical model depicting how social capital is created in business networks. It is integrated into the ARA model and designed specifically for studying the social facet of business relationships.

The paper is expected to aid IMP researchers in empirical contexts where the social component in business relationships is particularly prominent. As such, the novel approach presented could be used to further understand how social exchange processes are related to relationship governance, relationship initiation and development.

The proposed model shows how social capital is generated through the dynamic interplay in the social facets of actor, activity and resource dimensions, emphasising its creation dynamics. The model integrates insights from the classic works in economic sociology to strengthen the social side of IMP’s socioeconomic interface and is intended to be used as a tool for empirical application.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how bonding (i.e. tightly knit, emotionally close social relationships) and bridging social capital (i.e. outward looking open social relationships) affect opportunity recognition and innovation implementation in a cultural network of firms, investigating the main benefits of and drawbacks to both bonding and bridging social capital.

The paper is based on a case study of a cultural network of firms which share the same norms, principles and values. The method adopted is content analysis of qualitative data.

The authors find that in cultural network bridging social capital facilitates experimentation and combination of ideas from distant sources, while bonding social capital, which underpins the need for more conformity, is more effective for supporting innovation implementation. Innovation results from the interplay between the two dimensions of social capital, and each dimension contributes to the final outcome in a distinct and unique way.

There are some limitations which arise from the case study methodology; the limited set of industries analysed affects the generalizability of the findings.

The research has some practical implications for firms that belong to cultural networks. It offers suggestions about how to manage social relationships in different stages of the innovation process.

The authors examine the effects of bonding and bridging social capital on innovation in a cultural network of firms. The authors show that in a cultural network, different moments in the innovation process require different efforts related to the firm’s network relationships.

Relationships are socially constructed by companies in interaction. This study explains the dynamic character of business-to-business relationships with the aid of rules theory, a theory borrowed from the communications field. Two forms of rules are identified: constitutive rules guide the interpretation of the other's acts, and regulative rules guide the appropriate response to the interpreted act. Rules theory asserts that companies act as if applying these rules. Relationships provide not only the context in which the parties’ acts are performed but are also the result of such acts. Thus, relationships are potentially reshaped each time one party performs an act and the other party gives meaning to that act and reacts.

Long‐run corporate success requires engagement in two types of innovative activities: exploitation and exploration. However, earlier research has focused on exploration and exploitation concerning a firm's technologies. The purpose of the present article is to explicitly examine exploration and exploitation related to customers and markets.

The article is conceptual in nature, based on marketing, strategic management, and organization literatures.

The article explains the logic of exploration‐exploitation with respect to two market‐related resource classes – the firm's knowledge of markets and customers (market/customer intelligence) and market actors' knowledge of and bonds to the firm (brands/bonds) – as viewed in combination with the resource class of technologies, processes, and products (technologies/processes). The distinction of these three resource classes enables a three‐dimensional conceptualization of the ideal types of a firm's business development projects, which are seen as combinations of exploration and exploitation of resources across the three classes. The article also introduces the notions of multidimensionality of exploration‐exploitation within the resource classes and relativity of resource newness.

The article explicates how firms can orient their exploration and exploitation strategies not only on the technology dimension but also on the dimensions of market/customer intelligence and brands/bonds.

This paper aims to investigate the nature and dynamics of the interaction between university spin-offs (USOs) and academia.

The theoretical framework is grounded in an interactive view based on the industrial marketing and purchasing literature on USOs and their development. The concepts of activity links, resource ties and actor bonds are used as a starting point for capturing the content and dynamics of the interaction. The empirical part of the paper consists of four case studies captured through interviews as the main data source and analysed to conclude how the interaction between the USO and academia developed over time.

The study identifies a multi-faceted and dynamic content of the interaction. The paper discerns and discusses research and development links, knowledge and equipment ties and social, legal, financial and organizational bonds with inventors, other academic partners and innovation support organizations. The dynamics are manifested both through changes within individual relationships and by adding/ending relationships. One main conclusion regards the existence of wave-like patterns of interaction with academic partners driven by the USOs’ needs and the establishment of customer relationships.

Most of the previous research has described a linear process in which the USO leaves academia once the idea has been transferred to a company. This paper contrasts this view by developing and using an analytical framework to capture the dynamic and continuous interaction between USO and academia.

Business markets are complex. Sellers have to deal with customised demand, both passive and active markets, multi‐person interactions and interconnected relationships. Reports the case study of HDoX, a producer of hydrogen peroxide, an industrial chemical that has wide applications from the disinfecting of equipment in the foodstuffs industry to the bleaching of paper pulp. Focuses on HDoX’s practices for retention of its business customers, specifically, its industrial bulk users of hydrogen peroxide, through adaptation and bonding. HDoX’s customer retention practices are not part of an explicit retention plan but, instead, emerged as a result of HDoX’s continuous adaptation to customers and other members of its business network. The process of retaining industrial business customers is dynamic and contextualised and involves managing multi‐dimensional bonds between the seller, customers and other members of the business network.

IMP literature has developed the conceptualisation of a business landscape comprised of varying combinations of more or less interdependent activities, resources and actors, the form of which are defined by the interactive processes in which they are involved. However, the conceptualisation of the interactively defined business actor presents challenges to the understanding of the nature of business and the process of management. The purpose of this paper is to discuss what it is to be a manager in the complex interactive business landscape and the capabilities needed by business managers.

Few, if any, IMP studies have systematically addressed the concept of the business actor directly and the authors do not have a well-developed framework for analysing actors from the perspectives of interaction and networks. This paper analyses the evolving semantics of the concepts of the interactive business actor within some of the literature associated with the IMP research tradition, using the software Leximancer.

The paper integrates the analysis into a preliminary framework for describing the characteristics of the interactive business actor. The paper concludes by using this framework to suggest some of the capabilities that are required by the interactive business actor.

The analysis points to the ways that ideas of the business actor and business acting have developed in the literature. The analysis highlights some of the ways in which the development of these concepts is incomplete and points to potentially fruitful ways in which conceptual and empirical research could proceed.