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This paper aims to refine conceptual treatment of the social facet in business relationships and reinforce its significance in the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) research tradition by integrating the concept of social capital in its original interpretation into the actor-resource-activity (ARA) model.

The paper begins by indicating some typical conceptual challenges associated with application of social capital in IMP. This is followed by a conceptual clarification that explores the origin and the essence of social capital in economic sociology. Finally, the paper proposes integrating social capital in its original interpretation into IMP’s ARA model and presents four propositions on how social capital is created in interaction between business actors.

The paper shows how bridging Bourdieu’s theory of social capital with the IMP approach may solve the identified conceptual challenges. This paper’s main contribution is a cyclical model depicting how social capital is created in business networks. It is integrated into the ARA model and designed specifically for studying the social facet of business relationships.

The paper is expected to aid IMP researchers in empirical contexts where the social component in business relationships is particularly prominent. As such, the novel approach presented could be used to further understand how social exchange processes are related to relationship governance, relationship initiation and development.

The proposed model shows how social capital is generated through the dynamic interplay in the social facets of actor, activity and resource dimensions, emphasising its creation dynamics. The model integrates insights from the classic works in economic sociology to strengthen the social side of IMP’s socioeconomic interface and is intended to be used as a tool for empirical application.

Although trust is discussed widely in the literature, there are still discrepancies in the existing conceptualisations of the trust concept. These are usually either unidirectional or bi‐directional, and a limited or narrow approach is usually applied or taken into consideration. There is an apparent lack of mutual and simultaneous considerations beyond the dyadic business relationship. It is argued that an approach beyond dyadic business relationships is necessary to truly understand the trust between two actors in a marketing channel. In the first place, the trust in other upstream and downstream dyadic business relationships affects the trust in the dyad at focus. At the same time, the dyadic business relationship at focus is affected by upstream and downstream trust in other dyadic business relationships. Therefore, a generic model of the synchronised trust chain concept is introduced, as well as managerial implications and research proposals in the area.

The objective of this study is to identify firms with a greater propensity to establish interorganisational relationships, as well as which value‐chain activities are affected by these relationships in the Canary Islands' food industry.

The firms are grouped into large firms and small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), given the different resource endowments and dependencies of these two groups. Differences in the degree of flexibility or rigidity of their interorganisational relationships and in the activities affected by these relationships were expected. The fieldwork used a survey of the managers of a representative sample of 201 food firms, and univariate analysis statistical techniques were used to handle the data.

The paper finds that only 53 sample firms have developed interorganisational relationships, and 62.5 per cent of these are large firms. The flexible interorganisational link predominates. With regard to the value‐chain activities affected by these relationships, the most prominent are distribution and supplies, although size only has a statistically significant relation with some support activities.

The small proportion of food firms that have carried out interorganisational links in the Canaries means that the findings obtained cannot be entirely generalisable to the rest of the firms in the sector.

Most studies of the food industry take a macroeconomic approach, and research taking a strategic and interorganisational perspective is scarce.

This type of study centring on this particular strategic behaviour has not been carried out before in the Canary Islands.

While there is a growing body of literature seeking to explain interorganisational cooperative relationships, little from a communication perspective has emerged. This paper outlines the critical role played by communication in interfirm stategic alliances evident in Australia's telecommunications sector, concentrating on relationships involving the three carriers — Telecom, Optus, and Vodafone — and their firsttier ‘partners’. The study methodology focuses on in‐depth interviews with key industry and government executives. A key finding was the central role played by interpersonal relationships, centred on communication embedded in a climate of trust and commitment. The paper is divided into seven sections: (1) an introduction to the area of interorganisational cooperation; (2) an outline of the Australian telecommunications industry as the focus of the empirical work reported in the paper; (3) a discussion of how to best understand interorganisational cooperation, including an outline of the strategic alliances and partnerships involved in the study; (4) debate on how best to manage such alliances; (5) characterising the central role of communication for such relationships; (6) describing perceptions of such alliances; and (7) a conclusion, including pointers to future research directions and practices in the field.

This paper aims first to identify key interorganisational partnership types among non-profit organisations (NPOs) and second to determine how knowledge sharing takes place within each type of partnership. Results explore the value of social media specifically in facilitating external relationships between NPOs, firms and the communities they serve.

Empirical qualitative analysis of exploratory interviews with 16 Canadian NPOs generates a non-exhaustive classification of partnership types emerging from these organisations, and their defining characteristics in the context of interorganisational knowledge sharing.

Overall eight categories of partnerships from the sampled NPOs emerged from the analysis of the data. These include business partnerships, sector partnerships, community partnerships, government partnerships, expert partnerships, endorsement partnerships, charter partnerships and hybrid partnerships. Using examples from interviews, the sharing of knowledge within each of these partnerships is defined uniquely in terms of directionality (i.e. uni-directional, bi-directional, multi-directional knowledge sharing) and formality (i.e. informal, semi-formal or formal knowledge sharing).Specific practices within these relationships also arise from examples, in particular, the use of social media to support informal and community-driven collaborations. Twitter, as a popular social networking tool, emerges as a preferred medium that supports interorganisational partnerships relevant to NPOs.

This research is valuable in identifying the knowledge management practices unique to NPOs. By examining and discussing specific examples of partnerships encountered among NPOs, this paper contributes original findings about the implications of interorganisational knowledge sharing, as well as the impact of emerging social technologies on same.

Citizenship behaviours are used in organisation studies to explain their effectiveness and to capture the role of unsolicited, extra-role behaviours. Recent extensions towards the interorganisational context provide evidence that Interorganisational Citizenship Behaviours (ICBs) are important in facilitating supply chain operations and cluster innovation activities. This study took stock of citizenship behaviours literature within and among organisations, in order to develop and validate a measurement scale for ICBs useful in the food industry and beyond.

Departing from a literature driven 10-dimensional construct, Th authors proceeded with validating our scale in the South African craft brewing industry. The authors ran a face validation, followed by confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses on a sample of 108 expert informants. The authors ran nomological tests through correlation and regression analysis. Finally, logical analysis was done to ensure the theoretical integrity of the mathematical indications.

The authors found support that the model consisting of interorganisational magnanimity, interorganisational advancement and interorganisational constructiveness, is relevant for value creation within coopetitive networks. The purified scale included three psychometrically distinct ICBs dimensions, measured by 31 items.

Managers can benefit from adequately identifying ICB in their environment, and among their competitors in particular. The study’s measurement scale offers a useful tool for an initial monitoring of firms in their competitive environment.

The authors extended and advanced prior research on the ICB construct by providing a rigorously validated, parsimonious measurement scale of ICBs. The authors bridged the ICB and coopetition literature to better understand spontaneous extra-role coopetitive network facilitating behaviours.

This article aims to address the confusion related to the meanings of interorganisational cooperation, control, coordination and collaboration in collaborative projects by developing a conceptual framework. From this, the authors aim to describe the links among these concepts in terms of development levels of stakeholder relationships. In addition, the authors aim to identify challenges and preconditions in relation to developing relationships at different levels.

The authors have adopted the directed approach of qualitative content analysis method to validate and extend the conceptual framework of this study. The context of this study is a large hospital construction project located in northern Finland.

The findings of this study suggest that collaboration is a multilevel process of active engagement of multiple stakeholders. These stakeholders must have a high degree of shared understanding in terms of cooperation, control and coordination to achieve the mutually desired outcomes. This study also identifies the challenges that project stakeholders could face in developing collaborative relationships and propose preconditions for the same.

This study provides a better understanding for project managers to manage interorganisational collaborative construction projects successfully. The outcome of this research would be beneficial to project management team to deliver dispute-free construction projects.

Existing practical research on the development of relationships at different levels in collaborative construction projects is limited. This study offers a framework for the same which is validated in a real-life project.

Experience of a middle management training project in Egypt highlights the importance of interorganisational issues in planning and implementing management training projects in developing countries. The initial recognition of local interorganisational networks, identifying key organisations and their representative personnel, and actively working with networks from the perspective of planned interorganisational development activities (IOD) will ensure maximum local environmental support for a project.

The purpose is to examine the bases of positive relations between suppliers and purchasers of healthcare services. In doing so, the paper examines the nature of cooperation between the providers of healthcare services (hospitals) and those who commission and purchase healthcare on behalf of patients (regional health authorities).

The paper employs a qualitative interview approach for gathering and analysing major stakeholder (provider and purchaser) perceptions of their interorganisational relations and how these interactions impact on the quest of the healthcare provider to meet the needs of the community they serve.

The paper identifies group relevant variables into four major themes or “core categories” that characterise purchaser‐provider stakeholder cooperation. These themes represent provider and purchaser views on those factors characterising stakeholder relationships within the purchaser‐provider dyad.

The paper suggests that extending practitioners' understanding of the nature of these interrelated factors may lead to better insights of how interorganisational relations and partnerships might be managed more proactively throughout the healthcare value chain.

In the extant literature, there is a paucity of research that has illustrated multi‐stakeholder perspectives in the public sector. This paper explores the perceptions of two main stakeholders in public healthcare to map and assess management issues influencing purchaser‐provider cooperation.

The absence of an effective model for conceptualising and evaluating the interorganisational relationships within infrastructure delivery systems has been blamed for the seeming inability of implementation analysts to discover the causes of implementation gaps (disjuncture) experienced within such systems. This is particularly so in emerging economies where successive governments are trying to deliver socio-economic benefits to their citizenry through investments in infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model with such capabilities based upon the diagnostic principles of a base model-the Viable Systems Model (VSM) to bridge this identified gap.

In this qualitative study, two stages of data collection were applied at various stages of the study namely; asynchronous online discussion forums and structured interviews. Whereas the first set was used to determine the suitability of the tenets of the VSM in understanding the IDS, the latter was used to validate the emergent model. Data obtained from these processes were qualitatively analysed.

It was discovered that the VSM could also be applicable to TMOs and not just permanent organisations. This enabled these tenets to be applied in the development of a model for conceptualising and evaluating the relationships within the implementation cycle.

The emergent model-VIDM – would avail policy analysts in emerging economies with a tool for carrying out proper implementation analysis during policy implementation cycles and not just afterwards, particularly as it concerns infrastructure delivery processes.

This paper satisfies all the tenets of originality as it has not been previously published and all the ideas from other studies have been duly referenced.