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Boundary-spanning exploration through establishing alliances is an effective strategy to explore technologies beyond local search in innovating firms. The purpose of this paper is to argue that it is useful to make a distinction in boundary-spanning exploration between what a firm learns from its alliance partners (explorative learning from partners (ELP)) and what it learns from other organisations (explorative learning from non-partners (ELN)).

The authors contend that alliances play a role in both types of exploration. More specifically, the authors discern three types of alliances (inside ties, clique-spanning ties and outside ties) based on their role vis-à-vis existing alliance cliques. Clique members are highly embedded, and breaking out of the cliques through clique-spanning and outside alliances is crucial to improving explorative learning. Thereafter, the authors claim that clique-spanning ties and outside ties have a different effect on ELN and ELP.

The empirical analysis of the “application specific integrated circuits” industry indicates that inside ties have negligible effects on both types of explorative learning. Clique-spanning ties have a positive effect on ELP, but not on ELN. The reverse is true for outside ties. The results show that research on explorative learning should devote greater attention to the various roles alliance partners and types of alliances play in advancing technological exploration.

The literature only emphasises the learning from partners, focussing mainly on accessing their technology. In sum, alliance partners play different roles in exploration, and their network position influences the role they are able to play.

Social media platforms play a key role in information propagation and there is a need to study the same. This study aims to explore the impact of the number of close communities (represented by cliques), the size of these close communities and its impact on information virality.

This study identified 6,786 users from over 11 million tweets for analysis using sentiment mining and network science methods. Inferential analysis has also been established by introducing multiple regression analysis and path analysis.

Sentiments of content did not have a significant impact on the information virality. However, there exists a stagewise development relationship between communities of close friends, user reputation and information propagation through virality.

This paper contributes to the theory by introducing a stagewise progression model for influencers to manage and develop their social networks.

There is a gap in the existing literature on the role of the number and size of cliques on information propagation and virality. This study attempts to address this gap.

We examined factors contributing to the formation of a communications clique among deans representing a group of AACSB accredited colleges of business. We considered whether several variables which appeared to be related to clique status could be used to predict clique membership. We found some support for the idea that several factors play a role in determining group membership, but only agreement in opinion had a significant effect. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to segment the US food industry market through a network representation of the market.

A tangible technique is implemented to study the structural properties of food industry market. A systematic procedure is described to interpret the US food industry sector market data as a graph, which provides the framework under which the market is studied. The maximum cliques and independent sets are found in the market graph, which provides an efficient way for clustering the financial instruments representing food industry. A statistical analysis on the degree distribution of food industry market graph is also performed to study the properties of the market graph.

The maximum cliques provided a classification of stocks with similar behaviour. Market graphs were empirically shown to follow the power‐law model. The statistical analysis performed on the food industry market graph corroborated with this observation.

This research is an extension of the work by Boginski, Butenko and Pardalos as an application to the food industry. The study helps in efficient segmentation of the food industry market and provides more insights into the market structure.

The purpose of this study is to offer a theoretical and practical explanation for the nature and reasons for inter-organizational knowledge sharing across an informal clique of competing five-star hotels in the Saudi Arabian religious tourism and hospitality industry.

The methodology is an adapted form of the grounded theory approach deploying a four-stage research design using qualitative interviews with key players in the industry to inform the analysis of the knowledge sharing approaches.

The findings illustrate the features of the knowledge sharing approaches across the five-star hotels studied. In particular, the findings highlight the existence of a cooperative-competitive tension in the relationships and knowledge sharing between the hotels. This illustrates the existence of a tacit strategy that cooperation can lead to long-term benefits for the competitor hotels.

The study is unique in its focus on the cooperative-competitive tension of five-star hotels in the Saudi Arabian religious tourism and hospitality industry and on this influence on the inter-organizational knowledge sharing across hotels within an oligopolistic market structure. The study also has value in using elements of oligopoly theory and of game theory, particularly, the prisoner’s dilemma, in explaining how inter-organizational knowledge sharing occurs within this market context.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether women entrepreneurs are satisfied with belonging to a women’s network, as this issue is crucial for network performance and legitimacy.

The authors tested the hypotheses on a sample of 127 French women entrepreneurs who belonged to women’s networks using multiple regression analysis.

The authors showed that these women entrepreneurs were satisfied when they developed strong ties and when cliques in the network were limited. Education had a negative effect: the higher the educational level, the less satisfaction with their networks the women reported.

The sample was small and composed only of women entrepreneurs who were members of women’s networks and not women who had left them.

The survey findings suggest ways that managers can optimize network satisfaction to keep current members while continuing to add new ones: create an environment with no cliques where members can develop strong ties. This means connecting members with similar values or status and common interests, while making sure that cliques do not develop.

To the authors’ knowledge, satisfaction with professional women’s networks has never been studied. The authors’ highlight the role of strong ties in these networks and identify the contingent effect of cliques.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the microcredit system, social networks within self-help groups (SHGs) and micro-entrepreneurial activities at the grassroots aiming at well-being, sustainability and income generation. The empirical study took place in Phnom Penh.

Focus group and in-depth interviews were employed. Two SHGs in Phnom Penh were selected for this study. The social network approach was used to distinguish the type of nodes and cliques within SHGs.

The result suggests that there exist lending and borrowing nodes and cliques. Strong ties exist within a clique and only weak ties link between cliques. Job and business information transmits well on weak ties but not entrepreneurship. This explains the failure of the process of microcredit in fostering microenterprise among very poor and low-educated borrowers.

The findings were based on a small sample from two SHGs. Further study is needed for justification of the findings.

It was original research which took place in Phnom Penh. Homogeneous lending and borrowing cliques in microcredit networks were identified. A model of hierarchical microcredit network was hypothesized to explain how some members of a SHG are able to utilize the credit in starting up their microbusinesses while others failed.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the linear solution of equality constrained problems by using the Frontal solution method without explicit assembling.

Re-written frontal solution method with a priori pivot and front sequence. OpenMP parallelization, nearly linear (in elimination and substitution) up to 40 threads. Constraints enforced at the local assembling stage.

When compared with both standard sparse solvers and classical frontal implementations, memory requirements and code size are significantly reduced.

Large, non-linear problems with constraints typically make use of the Newton method with Lagrange multipliers. In the context of the solution of problems with large number of constraints, the matrix transformation methods (MTM) are often more cost-effective. The paper presents a complete solution, with topological ordering, for this problem.

A complete software package in Fortran 2003 is described. Examples of clique-based problems are shown with large systems solved in core.

More realistic non-linear problems can be solved with this Frontal code at the core of the Newton method.

Use of topological ordering of constraints. A-priori pivot and front sequences. No need for symbolic assembling. Constraints treated at the core of the Frontal solver. Use of OpenMP in the main Frontal loop, now quantified. Availability of Software.

This paper aims to describe relationships among healthcare professionals in a French public hospital using social network analysis (SNA) and to improve health service quality by strengthening health service management and leadership.

This study was based on a questionnaire sent to randomly selected French public hospital professionals and administrators. Network composition measures were obtained using a name generator. Analysis focused on three main indicators: “centrality”, “prestige”, and “clique participants”. The SNA was carried out using UCINET^® and statistical analyses were performed with SPSS version 15.0.

A total of 104 questionnaires were returned and analysed. Centrality, prestige and clique indicators were highly correlated (all p‐value were less than 0.01). Physicians had the highest scores for the three indicators. Older age (≥45 years) was associated with higher centrality and clique numbers scores. Transversal activity was associated with higher scores than other specific activities (hospitalisation, ambulatory care), except for emergency care.

The paper shows how networks and SNA techniques provide novel and useful means to understand communication and collaboration between hospital professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to report on an investigation of university students' participation and learning presence in a blogging activity, designed to support collaborative learning. There are three main reasons justifying the current research: to better understand the structure and the dynamics of students' blogging subgroups; to reveal students' patterns of engagement and their roles within the blogging community; and to evaluate the applicability of social network analysis (SNA) in studying students' performance and learning presence in educational blogs.

The design of students' blogging activities was rooted on the ideas of authentic learning and followed a project‐based learning philosophy. Data analysis used methods of SNA to reveal collaborative aspects of students' engagement, the different roles undertaken by the students and the structure of the community within group blogs.

SNA shed light into the different patterns of students' participation and the dynamics of students' learning presence within the community of group blogs. Research findings, both quantitative and qualitative, indicated that the majority of the students in the sample were generally active and exhibited learning presence actions within their group blog. Differences between students in the various groups were also recorded.

The study reported here is limited by the specific sample and the context of implementation. Future research will be directed towards applying the Community of Inquiry schema, in a way complimentary to SNA, to further analyse students' learning and cognitive presence in the community of the whole blogging project.

The originality of the paper concerns both the educational design of the blog‐based project activities and the use of SNA to reveal the different patterns of students' participation in educational blogging activities. Results could be of value for both educators and researchers in the field.