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Facing the global public health emergency (GPHE), the conflict of cultural differences and the imbalance of vital resources such as knowledge among different organizations are becoming more severe, which affects the enthusiasm and sustainability of firms' innovation heavily. It is an urgent problem to be solved for firms how to make use of internal knowledge and external power to help firms' sustainable innovation (FSI). Thus, the purpose of this study is to deeply analyze how firms' internal knowledge diversity (KD) and external ego-network structures [ego-network density (ED) and honest brokers (HB)] affect FSI, as well as how the ego-network structures (ED and HB) moderate the relationship between KD and FSI based on the perspective of the ego network.

Based on the data of the alliance innovation networks of China's new energy industries in 2009–2019, this study uses the social network analysis method and negative binomial regression model to explore the effect of KD and ego-network structures (ED and HB) on FSI, as well as the moderating effects of ego-network structures (ED and HB) on the relationship between KD and FSI based on the perspective of ego network.

This study finds that KD, ED and HB can boost FSI. Moreover, ED plays a negative moderating role in the relationship between KD and FSI. However, the negative moderating effect of HB on the relationship between KD and FSI is not significant.

This study presents fresh empirical evidence and new insights for firms on how to make full use of firms' internal KD and external ego-network structures to facilitate FSI.

First, this study not only enriches the research on the consequences of KD but also expands our understanding of the knowledge-based view to some extent. Second, this study not only enriches the motivation research of the FSI based on the perspective of ego-network in the context of the GPHE but also expands the application scope of social network theory and sustainable innovation' theory in part. Third, this paper is a new attempt to apply social network theory and knowledge-based view at the same time.

How do ego-networks evolve? How does such evolution affect firms’ innovation output? This chapter uses a longitudinal sample of firms in the biotechnology industry to address these questions. We use social network theory to develop a model of the structure and dynamics of firms’ interorganizational research collaboration ego-networks. Using novel longitudinal methods, this chapter demonstrates how research collaboration ego-networks in the biotechnology industry change over time and how this evolution affects focal firms’ subsequent innovative output. The model is tested on a sample of 482 biotechnology firms over a span of 17 years (1990–2006). The results indicate the significant impacts of ego-network size, ego-network growth, and the inclusion of new members in the ego-network on the innovation output of biotechnology firms. Our results also suggest that enlarging ego-networks by adding new and diverse members presents significant management challenges.

This study aims to explore the effect of competitive aggressiveness on firm performance and the moderating effect of firm 2019s ego-network structures in the international coopetition network.

From the perspective of strong cooperation of the global automobile industry in recent years, this study uses the global automobile firms in Factiva database as samples to test hypotheses using the least squares dummy variable (LSDV) model.

This study finds that there is different relationship between the number and variety of competitive actions and firm performance. In addition, ego-network structures have different coefficients for the number and variety of competitive actions.

The conclusions provide theoretical support and policy suggestions for firms to develop effective competitive strategies according to ego-network structures in the international coopetition network.

Many studies have investigated how the structure of the collaborative networks of researchers influences the nature of their work, and its outcome. Co-authorship networks (CANs) have been widely looked at as proxies that can help bring understanding to the structure of research collaborative ties. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for describing what influences the formation of different research collaboration patterns.

The authors use social network analysis (SNA) to analyze the co-authorship ego networks of the ten most central authors in 24 years of papers (703 papers and 1,118 authors) published in the Proceedings of CASCON, a computer science conference. In order to understand what lead to the formation of the different CANs the authors examined, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with these authors.

Based on this examination, the authors propose a typology that differentiates three styles of co-authorship: matchmaking, brokerage, and teamwork. The authors also provide quantitative SNA-based measures that can help place researchers’ CAN into one of these proposed categories. Given that many different network measures can describe the collaborative network structure of researchers, the authors believe it is important to identify specific network structures that would be meaningful when studying research collaboration. The proposed typology can offer guidance in choosing the appropriate measures for studying research collaboration.

The results presented in this paper highlight the value of combining SNA analysis with interviews when studying CAN. Moreover, the results show how co-authorship styles can be used to understand the mechanisms leading to the formation of collaborative ties among researchers. The authors discuss several potential implications of these findings for the study of research collaborations.

Previous studies examined the effect of inter-organizational collaboration relationships on organizational innovation. However, most focused on the configuration of the network from the static network perspective, and few examined the influence of network structure stability on an organization's exploratory innovation from the ego-network perspective. This study addresses this research gap by focusing on ego-network stability and its effect on an organization's exploratory innovation.

The empirical setting is the smartphone collaboration network from 2004 to 2017. We selected one-site schemes and panel data of patents from the Derwent Innovation Database. A negative binomial model with fixed effects was used to test our hypotheses.

The regression results show that an organization's ego-network stability has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with its exploratory innovation. Global cohesion of the focal organization's knowledge network moderates the process in such a way that when it is at a high level, an organization's exploratory innovation can benefit more from a moderate level of ego-network stability. However, local cohesion moderates in such a way that, at a low level, an organization's exploratory innovation can benefit more from a moderate level of ego-network stability.

This study highlights the importance of ego-network stability and its effect on the focal organization's exploratory innovation. It contributes to the literature on the relationship between ego-network stability and exploratory innovation by investigating the moderating role of global cohesion and local cohesion in knowledge networks.

This paper aims to analyze how a real estate business model innovation developed in a real estate network, with a special focus on the relationship between ego network structure and the innovative development of the business model.

The paper is a single case study of a Swedish real estate network of 38 actors. The data were collected at the individual actor level using multiple sources: 12 semi-structured in-depth interviews, 94 min of meetings and 28 written contracts. The empirical findings resulted in four propositions.

This study demonstrates that it was primarily the building user who was behind the innovative development of the real estate business model innovation, whereas the real estate company acted as a network hub and network resource coordinator. The ego network structures significantly affected the outcome.

Real estate companies should act as hubs, coordinating all the network actor resources the building user needs in the value-creation process. To be effective hubs, the representatives of real estate companies must create extensive personal and open ego networks to acquire central network positions.

Few studies examine business model innovation, particularly in the real estate context. Though large real estate businesses usually operate in the networks of various actors, analyses based on the network perspective are also lacking. This case study builds a valuable understanding of how network processes in real estate networks can be used as tools to foster real estate business model innovation, which in turn can lead to more competitive real estate companies and building users.

I assess the extent that the egonet method of collecting data permits accurate inferences to the true structural features of the network. This inference problem has three critical components: local-global inference error, ego distortion, and feature inference error. Analysis of four data sets indicates that structural features can be predicted by estimates generated from egonets in some instances, but more often than not they are not good predictors.

Catastrophic supply chain disruptions can significantly damage the operational and financial performance of firms. While a growing body of literature on supply network structures has studied what influences supply networks' vulnerability to supply chain disruptions and capability to recover from them, it remains unclear how supply network structures change after major supply chain disruptions. We aim to provide an understanding of how these changes occur.

Using a natural experiment approach and supply network data from Factset, this study investigates how firms' supply network structures change after experiencing the catastrophic supply chain disruptions caused by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. We capture post-earthquake supply network changes using the measures of degree centrality and ego network density.

The results of the analysis suggest that compared to unaffected firms, the affected firms experience changes in their supply network structures tending toward lower complexity measured by in-degree centrality, out-degree centrality and ego network density.

This study contributes to social network theory and the complex adaptive supply network literature by providing empirical evidence of structural changes in supply networks after catastrophic supply chain disruptions. A managerial contribution is made by providing a reflection on why these changes might be occurring and alert firms to the challenges of managing complexity in their supply networks.

Secondary school leadership provides multiple challenges in terms of the diversity of tasks, multiple demands on time, balancing communities and attending to instructional programming. An emerging scholarship suggests the importance of a distributed instructional leadership approach to high school leadership. However, what has been less thoroughly explored is how secondary school leadership is distributed leaders across a school district. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social structure and positions urban high school principals occupy in the district system.

This study was conducted in one urban fringe public school district in southern California serving diverse students populations. The data were collected at three time points starting in Fall 2012 and ending in Fall 2014 from a district-wide leadership team including all central office and site leaders. All leaders were asked to assess their social relations and perception of innovative climate. The data were analyzed through a series of social network indices to examine the structure and positions of high school principals.

Results indicate that over time high school principals have decreasing access to social capital and are typically occupying peripheral positions in the social network. The high school principals’ perception of innovative climate across the district decreases over time.

This longitudinal study, one of the first to examine high school principals from a network perspective, sheds new light on the social infrastructure of urban high school principals and what this might mean for efforts at improvement.

Athletic departments play an important role in sustainability-based collaborative processes due to their boundary spanning connections with both internal and external university stakeholders. As a result, athletic department representatives have become prominent members of university participant-governed network structures. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of dedicated “athletics green teams” as a unique form of control and coordination by considering how green team interactions support and augment the collaborative network of actors who are responsible for executing athletics sustainability practices on university campuses.

A sociocentric analysis is used to explore the network of a green team at a large American university. The analysis focuses on examining the size, composition and structure of relations involving green team members that facilitated various forms of information transmission and strategic action(s).

The results highlight how the presence of the athletic department in the green team provides heterophilous and multiplex relations across the collaborative network and how the green team itself provides a unique forum for planning and coordination, which is critical for providing more sophisticated, advanced structures for sustainability.

The findings of this study should reassure practitioners involved in convening green teams that such shared governance structures add value to athletics sustainability collaborative processes. In addition, subtle changes to the network governance structures has the potential to streamline the contribution of athletic departments to university sustainability initiatives and help project a more cohesive “Athletics” sustainability message that transmits across the collaborative network.

The outcomes of dedicated athletics green teams have been explored from a largely qualitative perspective. However, this study applies a novel relational approach to understand the shared governance value-added within a largely intra-organizational collaborative network.