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Recent research places an increased emphasis on the inclusion of the customer in value creation, learning and innovation processes; yet, there remains a gap in the understanding of just how such customer involvement may work. This paper aims to address this gap by examining two aspects of customer involvement – their knowledgeability and their agency. In addition, three boundaries (semantic, syntactic and pragmatic) across which relationship development occurs and which may facilitate and/or inhibit value co-creation, collaborative learning and innovation processes have been explored.

Three case studies have been used. Two were large-scale construction projects in the UK, and one was a global professional accounting firm in the USA.

Customers may become frustrated if not allowed to exercise their agency. However, their involvement can create tensions for suppliers who may have to become more tolerant of divergent goals. In respect of knowledgeability, it was found that constraint satisfaction is important in allowing customers to reconcile their personal knowledge schema with the collective schema. However, it was also noted that customer knowledgeability brings with it challenges for suppliers, who must find ways to add value for such customers.

A number of further questions relating to the agency and knowledgeability of customers and their inclusion in value co-creation, collaborative learning and innovation processes have been posed. The need for guidance in identifying and minimising the barriers to crossing semantic, syntactic and pragmatic boundaries between customers and suppliers has also been highlighted.

This study makes an important contribution to research in the field, in that how the inclusion of the customer in business networks alters current assumptions and practices is investigated.

Firms collaborate for many reasons; however, sharing resources would seem a primary motive. This paper seeks to argue that in many instances firms collaborate to become part of a knowledge network – to learn about their industry and collectively use their knowledge to serve their own customers more effectively in a competitive environment.

This is a conceptual paper; however, the authors illustrate the work with examples from the automotive industry.

The authors conclude that it is necessary to expand traditional approaches to understanding networks to include the nature and purpose of the interactions between the firms, as well as the structural features of the network and the development of shared meaning and consensus among the network participants.

The authors demonstrate the need to take a broader view of learning and collaboration in networks.

The automotive and other industries are beginning to witness firms collaborating with competitors and other firms that can add value through collective learning. What seems certain is that for many industries the basis of future competition will be collaborative learning communities versus collaborative learning communities rather than OEM versus OEM in competing for resources and market share.

The paper examines how and why firms interact and how this influences what learning is shared, and how such learning is utilised by the firms involved. The paper explores the concept of collective learning, and discusses how the nature and purpose of the interactions between network partners facilitate key learning capabilities.

This paper aims to examine the characteristics of buyer‐supplier relationship dissolution in China.

The paper presents the results of nine in‐depth interviews of Chinese managers of dissolved long‐term business relationships.

The paper finds that it is common in China for relationships to have a transferable “energy” after the dissolution of a relationship due to the guanxi that exists between individuals prior to dissolution. It is also common for dysfunctional relationships to “fade away” so as not to lose “face” for a business partner or damage any guanxi developed by abruptly ending relations. Additionally, a characteristic of dissolution in China is the involvement of a third‐party (an individual who introduced subsequent business partners), who would often then play an active role in the dissolution of the relationship.

The findings are based on data from managers in private enterprises with no examination of state‐owned enterprises.

The paper offers guidelines for the characteristics of relationship dissolution in China that make it distinctive, particularly in comparison to dissolution in a Western context.

This study contributes to the understanding of relationship dissolution by examining buyer‐supplier relationship dissolution in China. The findings of this study suggest that much can be gained by examining predominantly western views of relationship functionality and dysfunctionality in different cultural contexts.

This study focuses on the potential difficulties in implementing a relationship marketing strategy within a retail context. We suggest that a number of attributes characterise the nature of the service and market structure are influential in an organisation’s ability to implement relationship marketing. Specifically, these are balance of power; level of involvement with the purchase; professionalism of the service provider; and level of personal contact. Seven dimensions central to relationship marketing in a retail context are derived from the literature. Via survey research, these are evaluated in four service contexts, namely: hairdresser/barber; optician; recreation centre; and supermarket. Findings indicate that because of the influence of the four factors identified above, hairdressers, opticians, and recreation centres are more likely to operate in conditions that give greater support to the development of relationship marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to identify why and how organizational network legitimacy facilitates firms' access to knowledge networks and reciprocal knowledge exchange between stakeholders.

The study involves a managerially oriented inductive interpretative research, with empirical evidence sourced from a single in‐depth case study, complemented by hands‐on experience with the industry.

Subsidiaries of multinationals operating in China's politically sensitive and protective mobility technology market have stronger proactive and collaborative aspirations towards exploiting emerging technological opportunities in the external environment and developing technological capabilities because they are more inclined to pursue organizational network legitimacy initiatives.

How organizational network legitimacy is produced, where does it become manifest, and at what administrative layers within China's politically sensitive and protective telecommunications are systematic empirical research questions that could be examined in the future.

Internalizing, driven only by market and/or technology legitimacy, falls short of realizing the organizational network legitimacy goal. It must also include cognitive understanding of the net sum of relational, investment and social legitimacies, as these are cognitively binding as well as benefiting with respect to subsidiaries of multinationals in accessing knowledge networks.

The paper underscores the importance of studying organizational network legitimacy and how it impacts on firms' access to knowledge networks, in a politically sensitive and protective Chinese mobility technology market.

Human needs and motivation are a central tenet of marketing discourse. In this exploratory study we attempt to understand the factors that drive individuals' higher‐order human needs in a relatively new electronic marketing context, that of virtual worlds.

The study employs the higher‐order needs from Abraham Maslow's hierarchy (i.e. belonging, esteem and self‐actualization) and a series of drivers related to the characteristics of the virtual world medium, personality characteristics, channel interaction, and demographic criteria. Data is collected via a survey delivered in Second Life (n=404) and analyzed using PLS path modeling.

Arousal, pleasure, and individualism act as particularly potent drivers of higher‐order needs in virtual world channels, while channel intensity, affinity for technology and gender act as lesser drivers.

An understanding of personal motivations affords us an insight into consumers' needs and wants and is a useful precursor to targeting them and in effectively fulfilling these needs. This has implications not only in a single channel but across multiple channels.

This study represents one of the first attempts to better understand consumer behavior in virtual world channels, and, by so doing, better inform our understanding of personal needs in the modern multi‐channel environment.

This study aims to explore the process of the arrival of technological change and how the learning process impacts on network evolution.

The paper uses longitudinal, case‐based qualitative research to illustrate the network dynamics underpinning two technological generations.

The arrival of technological change not only is a pivotal event concerning a firm's long‐term competitiveness, but also challenges the firm's ability to manage its portfolio of relationships and balance its position in the evolution of business nets. Such an arrival process can be viewed as a learning process, where the firm learns how to devise appropriate strategies based on its inter‐organizational interaction history to cope with the rapidly changing environment, for example technological changes.

The findings illustrate the value of analyzing technological change from a network perspective. They illustrate the complexity of the process and show that, despite cooperation and collaboration, relationships are constrained and/or enabled by organisational learning. Relationships are determined by a plethora of issues such as strategic fit, functional fit and time fit.

This paper aims to explore the necessary mechanisms for coordination in complex industrial networks which are temporary in nature, known as temporary organisations (TOs).

The paper is based on two in-depth case studies conducted in the UK construction industry.

The paper outlines the necessary mechanisms for coordination in TOs – referred to as “scaffolding practices” – which ensure consistency (stability in terms of thinking and action), consensus (agreement) and co-constitutiveness (personal pledges and commitments).

The study provides practical implications for situations where actors create temporary organisational specific logics. This “logic” helps explain how actors are able to undertake tasks of finite duration where members lack familiarity and have competing loyalties.

The paper is novel in that it represents the first extant attempt to examine “temporary industrial organizations” where individuals from different (often competing) organisations collaborate on a task for a defined period and suggests how coordination may be achieved.

This study sets out to examine the relationship between firms' learning orientation and network collaboration. The aim is to investigate how learning orientation enhances network collaboration and to discuss the role of the co‐innovation focus in the learning orientation‐network collaboration relationship.

Based on a partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling analysis of 90 small and medium‐sized industrial firms (SMEs), the study tests hypotheses regarding how two diverse learning orientations – i.e. exploration and exploitation – precede firms' network collaboration.

The analysis shows that learning drives firms' co‐innovation focus in terms of product and process co‐innovation. In particular, the explorative learning orientation is found to foster firms' network collaboration through product co‐innovation. Exploitative learning orientation promotes process innovations but discourages networking.

A key implication for business practitioners is the understanding that SMEs' explorative learning approaches drive their network collaboration. The development of novel product innovation calls for learning with partners in inter‐organizational networks, whereas process improvements rely on the firm's intra‐organizational learning.

The paper provides evidence of the connection between firms' learning orientation, co‐innovation focus, and networking. Thus, it contributes to the literature on organizational learning, innovation management, and business networks by explicating how learning drives a firm's networking through its co‐innovation focus.