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The benefits of network relations for firms’ competitive advantage are increasingly acknowledged in the strategic management literature. Yet, the cost implications of engaging in network-specific relations, stemming from the irreversibility of sunk costs invested in creating network relations, are largely ignored. Such costs tend to be especially pronounced in high technology firms. It follows that the costs of creating network relations may mask the benefits of such relations, suggesting that networks can be a competitive risk for firms in cases where network relations unexpectedly terminate. This chapter adopts a cost-benefit approach to an empirical analysis showing that while in the long term, network relations enhance high technology firms’ performance, short-term efforts in creating network relations may hamper their performance. Furthermore, we show that greater technological intensity intensifies the negative performance implications of short term network participation and the positive performance implications of long term network participation.

Aims to solve the problem of why newer organizational models are losing their capability to elaborate and develop valuable firm‐specific sources of competitive advantages. Devotes special attention to the interdependent link between the rise of flexible employment relations and the diminishing capability of newer organizational models to sustain the sources of firm‐specific competitive advantages. Argues that an organization which relies heavily on flexible workforces will lose its ability to bind, retain as well as attract its skilled and most important idiosyncratic workers. First describes how the traditional organizational order, known as Fordism, is challenged and what newer organizational models claim to offer. Develops two different conceptional models that depict the hypothesized interdependent relation between the quality and degree of employment relations and the firms’ capability to use and elaborate the idiosyncratic knowledge of its workforce. Shows that the workforce has to be recognized as an increasingly non‐replicable, intangible, difficult to replicate firm‐specific source of sustainable advantage that cannot easily be imitated by competitors if retained and bound within organizational boundaries.

The enabling role of accounting in supporting classical contractual exchange has been extensively analysed in agency theory. In contrast, analyses the role of accounting in enabling empirically important and welfare‐enhancing long‐term relations which rely on trust and co‐operation rather than legal remedies. Under what circumstances does accounting strengthen, weaken or even destroy the trust which underpins relations both within and between organizations? What are the implications for accountability? Explores these general questions in the contrasting contexts of compulsory contracting policies in UK local government and the transition from socialism in Eastern Europe.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of family firms’ types of social networks on internationalisation. By investigating the mechanisms and the process and complexity regarding the operation, function and impact of social networks, this paper aims to gain insights and understand the dynamism concerning the content, and process as well as build rich and detailed construct analysis.

This study used a qualitative case study as a research strategy to examine the impact of social networks on family firm internationalisation. A qualitative research strategy was used as the impact of networking relations and structure is challenging to be measured statistically.

The findings suggest that family firm internationalisation was gradual and characterised by an incremental learning process. This process facilitated the networking relations and structures that helped firms improve their quality, product diversification and set competitive prices.

This study’s first limitation is that it focused mainly on low technology manufacturing firms. This paper recommends examining how high technology firms maximise social networks. Secondly, this paper examined family firms; therefore, this paper recommends comparing and contrasting networking relations and family and nonfamily firms' social structure. Thirdly, being limited only to social networks, this study did not focus on the impact of ownership; this paper suggests future studies to examine family ownership and involvement in firm internationalisation.

Understanding how firms’ social network types influence family firms’ internationalisation in a transition economy is critical to ensuring family businesses’ expansion. This study explains how family firms use social networks to internationalise, extending the current understanding of family business literature in transition economies. It also provides implications for policymakers and family firms managers for improving the growth prospects of family businesses.

Public relations evaluation is a complex issue because of the hierarchy of effects of public relations activity and the involvement of third parties such as the press and broadcast media. Evaluation can be either summative or formative, although the two are frequently confused. This article establishes principles of evaluation that can form a foundation for a more sophisticated “toolkit” approach.

The purpose of this study is to develop a model for business to business salesperson performance (SP) with a service ecosystems perspective.

To achieve the research aims, classical grounded theory was used. The data was gathered through in-depth interviews with 20 sales managers and main sales actors.

After coding and analyzing the data, salesperson institutional performance is introduced as a core category including three main dimensions of regulative, normative and cognitive-cultural performance. Multi-level factors determining SP are identified and performance results are introduced in a multi-level long term way. The sales actors, macro variables, actors’ orientations and sales method are introduced as circumstances, while salesperson stressors are presented as covariants deterring the fulfillment of salesperson’s activities.

This study focuses on the contributions of the salesperson in the alignment of institutional arrangements or the results of their being institutionalized, as well as determining the factors and variables affecting it.

This case study aims to analyse dyadic empirical relations within food supply chains. The categories of market, hierarchy or power, network and social relations were used to disclose the coordinative structures on the chain level and connect these with the chain development.

The actors of three vegetable supply chains were interviewed. The coordinative relations of actors were identified and the coordinative structures on the chain level were made visible by combining the ego networks of chain actors. The “story of supply chain development” was intertwined with the analysis.

The studied food supply chains were coordinated mostly by duplex or multiplex relations, combining market, hierarchy or power, network and social relations. In addition to the strategic network, presented in literature, the study identified a coordinative structural mode of socially overlaid network. In general, the network relation was found to be used as an effective “glue” within all coordinative structures. Both coordinative structural modes exhibited substantial growth, on the condition that agricultural base and buyers enabled enlargement.

Economic sociological perspective has been used in explaining food supply chain development by making visible the coordinative relations and structures on the chain level. The chain level phenomena appear as a promising field of study.

Based on the findings in earlier research of the importance of relationships in general, and relationships to social actors in particular to explain innovation processes in emerging economies, the aim of the paper is to reach a better understanding of the mechanisms behind innovations in these economies. This has been accomplished through an investigation of an innovation process and the relationships between two business firms and a NGO that were central for its progression. Theoretically the study is constructed on the concepts of trust, commitment and cultural capability in long and short-term relationships as discussed in business network theory and theory on discontinuous innovation. A case study method is used and the social innovation project ‘Connexão Belterra’ that enabled connectivity in the distant Amazon region of Pará, Brazil, was investigated.

The purpose of this study is to understand the structure and dynamics of minority equity sponsorship agreements and the motivations for organizations to go beyond traditional sponsorships by acquiring minority equity in the sponsored organization.

This paper adopts a qualitative methodology and presents interview data from key actors involved in minority equity sponsorship agreements.

The findings of the paper include major characteristics of minority equity sponsorship agreements including the motivations, dynamics and resources exchanged by sponsoring firms and clubs in these relationships, based on the experiences of key actors from firms, clubs and other key stakeholders, and a conceptual model for forming and maintaining these relationships.

Sponsorships are increasingly evolving into minority equity sponsorship agreements, particularly in the European market. The findings of this study assist sponsoring firms and the executives of clubs in better understanding the dynamics and stakeholder-related consequences of these relations.

The findings of this paper illustrate the differences between minority equity sponsorship agreements and both traditional sponsorships and minority equity alliances. The findings also identify major characteristics of these relationships and the interdependencies among these characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to bridge the boundaries separating strategic and comparative institutional perspectives on human resource systems and employment relations. Each research tradition has investigated the role and outcomes of corporations as they operate in an increasingly global economy. Researchers in these traditions, however, ask different research questions and draw on distinct social science disciplines, theoretical assumptions, and research methodologies. While they have pursued parallel but separate tracks, we argue that they have important lessons for each other. In this paper, we review the core characteristics and critiques of each research tradition, provide a series of examples of efforts to bridge their differences, and offer suggestions for future integration.