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This paper aims to identify the relationships of both organizational isomorphism and knowledge search with the innovation performance of cluster enterprises. It also specifies the mechanism by which organizational isomorphism affects innovation performance, through knowledge search.

Firm-level data were collected with questionnaires distributed to cluster enterprises in Zhejiang Province, China, which produced 165 usable responses for the analysis. Both multiple regression analyses and structural equation modelling were used to test the hypotheses.

Normative isomorphism and mimetic isomorphism have inverse U-shaped effects on the innovation performance of cluster enterprises, as does exploratory knowledge search. Exploitative knowledge search and the balance between two types of knowledge search have positive effects on the innovation performance of cluster enterprises; exploratory and exploitative knowledge searches exert partial mediation effects between the organizational isomorphism and innovation performance of cluster enterprises. The mediating effect of knowledge search transforms the inverse U-shaped effect of normative isomorphism and mimetic isomorphism on innovation performance into a positive effect.

This study provides new insights into the effects of organizational isomorphism on innovation performance by showing the indirect influence of organizational isomorphism in clusters. The study proposes a strategic logic of moderate isomorphism, clarifies the innovative effect of different knowledge search modes and reveals the construction and management mechanisms of organizational isomorphism and knowledge search strategy of firms in clusters.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying knowledge structure and evolution of industrial-buying research published between 1965 and 2015.

Bibliometric analysis is performed on 357 relevant papers (using principal component analysis and natural language processing, using VantagePoint® tools, used to generate bubble maps, auto-correlation maps and Aduna cluster maps), demonstrating how various factors involved in industrial buying have evolved, their degree of correlation with each other and the interrelationships of multiple factors concerning their co-occurrences.

The systematic mapping of industrial-buying research would illustrate the development of the significant factors in industrial-buying research. This paper provides both a global perspective on the leading countries and journals in the field and a robust roadmap for further investigation in this field.

This paper is limited to the data considered for analysis and may, therefore, overlook or underestimate some work that has not been captured while filtering databases related to industrial buying.

This paper facilitates near-future projection and trend analysis in industrial-buying research.

The methodology used is unique to the field of business-to-business marketing.

The level of trust in a service provider is an important decision factor when buying industrial services. Especially, the outcome uncertainties of services, its individuality, and asymmetric information between buyer and seller are some reasons that the evaluation of trust is a key component in service trading. Consequently, searching of potential new suppliers involves examining providers’ trustworthiness. This paper focuses on the study of online trust signals used by buyers, to assess provider’s trustworthiness in the context of industrial services. The main research objective is to propose the basis for a digital tool, which helps buyers to assess provider’s trustworthiness by providing a “standardized trustworthiness signal description” and “trust functionalities.” A particular approach is used, wherein different methods are mixed such as a case study, expert interviews, and a quantitative method following the guideline of the design science paradigm. The aim is to propose a useful tool for trustworthiness assessment to enhance e-markets for industrial services.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate business visitor behaviour at trade shows and to propose a complementary view based on the experiential perspective in marketing.

The paper reports an ethnographic study conducted in the context of ten international trade shows in the textile‐apparel industry in Europe.

The study sheds light on the nature of the experience provided by trade show exhibitors and organisers and on visitors' lived experiences. Trade shows immerse industrial buyers in a physical and cognitive experience that requires their active participation. Under such circumstances, industrial marketers who employ experiential marketing techniques are likely to increase their trade show performances.

The paper adopts a new perspective that sees business visitor behaviour from an experiential standpoint and discusses the managerial implications that highlight the interplay of exhibitors and trade show organisers in designing and setting valuable experiences for visitors.

Unfair charges prevent free competition. ‘After 1992 there is supposed to be free competition within the EEC within the same basic market. But how can someone working in Greece compete with the same type of company in Germany when Greek data communication costs — fixed by a state monopoly — are 2.5 times higher for the same thing?’

ACCOUNTS of some comments made at the Annual National Committee meeting of the Amalgamated Engineering Union make discouraging reading. This is the only suitable adjective when speakers at that meeting state that time standards determined by time study are set on the performances of the best workers in the shop. We should have thought that with all the training that representatives have received in time study and allied subjects both from managements and unions that they would have known better than this.

Industrial and academic users of online bibliographic searching over a year's time did not generally diminish their amount of use of other traditional manual means of information gathering activities. However, in comparison to less frequent users and nonusers, frequent users increased their reliance on librarians. Online users increased their appraisal of the adequacy of information services available to them, particularly as regards those aspects generally considered the primary benefits of online searching. Users positively increased their assessment of the utility of online searches to their work, and online bibliographic searching capability was subsequently adopted as a permanent feature in both the industrial and academic work settings.

Mediated free online bibliographic search services were offered to 70 academic chemists and 262 industrial scientists and technologists. Consistent with earlier studies of users and nonusers of computer‐readable bibliographic databases, generally negligible differences were found. Nor were the correlates of use in an industrial setting generally replicated in an academic setting. However, prior information ‘style’, satisfaction with more traditional information resources, and attitudinal predisposition to the possible utility of online search services have some small effect on subsequent usage of online services.

Investigates those aspects of the communication process which relate to the conditions determining the receptiveness of the individual buyer to marketing communicative and the manner in which he/she searches the market. Examine the factors which stimulate search behaviour and identifies the extent of market search by buyers. Studies the relationship between the reasons for and the extent of search as well as other characteristics such as those of the buyers and their companies.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ontological implications of combining network and system ontology to conceptualize industrial networks as the empirical manifestations of complex adaptive economic systems.

This paper contributes with a systematic discussion on how network and system ontology can be combined to produce better understandings of business networks. It also provides a review of the state-of-the art research literature on the topic as a starting point for the discussion.

Findings indicate that networks may be enclosed in each other constituting sub- and supra-networks comprising increasing complexity. In these cases, sub-networks that are black-boxed can be seen as entities in themselves producing inputs and outputs to the supra-network. Networks, once they become black-boxed, can assume the functions of generative mechanisms within a wider supra-network.

This research is conceptual in nature and needs to be complemented with empirical research. In addition, the literature review used one database complemented with papers from the IMP journal. A wider search could reveal additional research that can be of relevance for the development of the field.

This paper addresses the ontological and methodological issues arising from a mixed system and network ontology. These issues are commonly ignored or dealt with indirectly in extant literature. For any accumulation of knowledge in the field to be possible, the explication of a mixed ontology is important as it have conceptual and methodological consequences. Adopting such a mixed ontological position provides an ontology in line with empirical research of business practice.