Search results

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.

Researchers agree that collaboration networks can be an important implement in a firm’s innovation process, but there is limited empirical evidence on actually how they facilitate the new product development (NPD). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using longitudinal and multisource data on a sample of firms engaged in the Chinese automobile industry, the authors examine the structural properties of collaboration networks and their possible influences on firms’ NPD performance.

The results indicate that the structural features of the technology-based collaboration networks in the automobile industry have a low degree of collaborative integration and they influence firms’ NPD performance in diverse ways. The authors find that the direct ties, indirect ties and structural holes of the collaboration networks are all positively associated with firms’ number of new products. However, the authors have not found the evidence that the number of direct ties can moderate the relationship between the indirect ties and the NPD performance.

First, previous researches concerning the network mainly focused on their influence on technology innovation, few scholars studied the relationship between collaboration network and NPD. Second, the data used in this paper are true and valid, they are all from relevant departments of the Chinese government. Third, the empirical research of new products in China’s manufacturing industry is relatively new.

This paper aims to analyse the evolution of Chinese industrial ethnic clusters in Italy, by focusing on the role of social networks and the processes behind the phenomenon of Chinese worker exploitation and entrepreneur “self-exploitation”.

The case study is a sub-cluster of micro and small enterprises owned by Chinese entrepreneurs within the leather industrial district of Florence, Italy. This research adopts the following mixed methods: a small-scale survey to capture the characteristics of the sub-cluster and a social network analysis to describe cluster evolution, complemented by life-course interviews conducted with key informants and entrepreneurs.

Migrant social capital and social networks play a central role in the evolution of the case study sub-cluster. Social networks play a supportive role in migration, job creation, entrepreneurship formation and the creation of business opportunities. Simultaneously, they enhance the phenomenon of worker exploitation and entrepreneur self-exploitation. Furthermore, the more the business community grows, the more the economic performance of ethnic enterprises depends on agglomeration forces produced by the cluster.

The findings suggest a series of potential policies to upgrade the ethnic enterprises' capacities, to increase their formality and inclusion in the Italian social and economic systems and sub-cluster.

To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to examine the evolution of social networks in relation to the phenomenon of Chinese worker exploitation and entrepreneur self-exploitation in an ethnic industrial sub-cluster.

The purpose of this paper is to present the construct of social intra-organizational connection (SIC). This construct reflects the extent to which a focal actor believes his alters present behaviors of social inclusion in relation to himself. This assessment compares the ego’s expectations of being included and the behavior of inclusion performed by those alters with whom the actor has more frequent interactions. The effects of this construct are tested in the organizational domain regarding the intention to leave, in the domain of co-workers regarding cooperation and in the family domain regarding work–family conflict.

The survey data were collected from 380 Brazilian workers.

The results confirmed the effects of SIC in the relational domain of the organization through the variation in the focal actor’s intention to leave. In the sphere of coworkers, the effects of SIC were found in the variation of the degree of cooperation. In the family sphere, SIC had an influence upon the intensity of the work–family conflict.

The research indicates that the behavior of making direct contacts and more frequent interactions by the focal actor extends to other relational spheres through the transitions of the organizational member between the domains of organization, coworkers and family. This paper draws attention to the need to consider the local networks, both within and beyond the organization, and their effects on each other.

This paper aims to better understand how business model innovation (BMI) occurs in the context of sustainable entrepreneurship, emphasizing the dialectical nature of entrepreneurial relationships. To do so, key interdependencies and reciprocal influences between internal/firm-specific and external/environmental factors underlying BMI for sustainability are analysed through co-evolutionary lenses.

A co-evolutionary framework is developed and applied to a longitudinal business model (BM) analysis of 15 Italian widespread hotels, which creatively use historic villages at risk of abandonment to establish their hotels.

Largely influenced by the interplay between internal and external factors, BMI of widespread hotels occurs through multilevel co-adaptations, which are recognised as virtuous by all stakeholders involved. Effective variations of the BM value elements are selected resulting in circular economy practices, which are retained for successful BMI, radical (first) and incremental (thereafter). Knowledge of specific local and multi-local conditions, time awareness and a future-oriented temporal perspective, by both entrepreneurs and policymakers, favour this dynamic.

Developing targeted policies and practices based on increased organisational knowledge supported by indicators can help in selecting and retaining successful variations of BMs appropriately in/with time with positive effects on firms' performance and sustainable development.

This study provides a novel co-evolutionary framework that explicitly links sustainable entrepreneurship and BM concepts in the accommodation sector. It further proposes a dynamic and holistic explanation of BMI for sustainability from which the crucial roles of the time-knowledge binomial and circular practices emerge.

The establishment of partnerships between companies, government and universities aims to enhance innovation and the technological development of institutions. The biotechnology sector has grown in recent years mainly driven by its cooperative business model. Compared to other countries, this sector is slowly advancing in Brazil, with delays in science, technology and innovation, especially in the private sector. This paper aims to examine, through social network analysis, the collaborative networks between institutions that filed patents in biotechnology – medicinal preparations from plants – whose inventions had Brazil as the priority country.

The study of technological cooperation using patent documents is a reliable approach as they serve as good indicators of the interactions between organizations that focus on innovation and development of new product. Social network analysis of cooperation networks helps to understand the connections between patent assignees, and how they establish relationships.

Results show that public universities are the institutions that most deposit patents, as well as those that co-operate the most, especially Universidade of Campinas. The study also reveals the critical role of Research Support Agencies in stimulating research and technological development, which result in new technologies.

The study applied the social network analysis to provide an overview of the interactions among Brazilian institutions with the purpose of helping in decision-making and inciting public policies to leverage the biotechnology sector.

This paper presents a critical review of the economic network analysis methods and their applications to maritime transport. A network can be presented in terms of its structure, topology, characteristics as well as the connectivity with different measures such as density, degree distribution, centrality (degree, betweenness, closeness, eigenvector and strength), clustering coefficient, average shortest path length and assortative. Various models such as the random graph model, block model, and ERGM can be used to analyse and explore the formation of a network and interaction between nodes. The review of the existing theories and models has found that, while these models are rather computationally intensive, they are based on some rather restrictive assumption on network formation and relationship between ports in the network at the local and global levels that require further investigation. Based on the review, a conceptual framework for maritime transport network research is developed, and the applications for future research are also discussed.

This paper presents a critical review of the economic network analysis methods and their applications to maritime transport. A network can be presented in terms of its structure, topology, characteristics as well as the connectivity with different measures such as density, degree distribution, centrality (degree, betweenness, closeness, eigenvector and strength), clustering coefficient, average shortest path length and assortative. Various models such as the random graph model, block model, and ERGM can be used to analyse and explore the formation of a network and interaction between nodes. The review of the existing theories and models has found that, while these models are rather computationally intensive, they are based on some rather restrictive assumption on network formation and relationship between ports in the network at the local and global levels that require further investigation. Based on the review, a conceptual framework for maritime transport network research is developed, and the applications for future research are also discussed.