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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how complementors’ marketing capability and technology capability affect their performance. Drawing on social capital theory, the authors examine platform network centrality as a mediator and platform reputation as a moderator of the relationships between these two capabilities and complementor performance.

This study collects data by questionnaire from 154 Chinese firms adopting e-commerce platforms. Hierarchical multiple regression is used to test the hypotheses of this study.

This study finds that complementors’ marketing capability and technology capability positively affect performance by increasing their platform network centrality. Moreover, platform reputation positively moderates the relationship between platform network centrality and complementor performance, and it strengthens the mediating role of platform network centrality.

This paper emphasizes the critical role of marketing capability and technology capability on complementor performance. It explores the improvement path of complementor performance from the perspective of network position, which is a key element for complementors to effectively leverage their capabilities to build competitive advantage.

As sustainable performance has a central role in the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) performance literature, this study aims to examine the influence of networking capabilities in enhancing sustainable performance through knowledge workers’ productivity and digital innovation. It also examines the sequential mediating role of knowledge workers’ productivity and digital innovation on networking capabilities and SMEs’ sustainable performance relationship.

Data were collected from 308 knowledge workers in the information technology sector and analyzed using the Hayes Process Macro bootstrapping method to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results indicate that knowledge workers’ productivity and digital innovation individually and sequentially mediate the relationship between networking capabilities and SME’s sustainable (economic and environmental) performance, surprisingly, they do not act as a mediator between networking capability and SME’s social performance. SMEs should prioritize investments in the professional development of their knowledge workers through training and skill enhancement programs. This investment equips knowledge workers with the tools to effectively use the knowledge and resources acquired through networking. Thus, knowledge workers may improve performance by using these resources to tackle challenges.

Although this research focused on this specific context, it is prudent to acknowledge that additional factors may also exert influence on sustainable performance within SMEs, factors that managers may consider when making decisions. Methodologically, the cross-sectional design of this research poses a potential limitation, as it does not allow for the complete elimination of endogeneity concerns. However, it is worth noting that scholars have endorsed the use of cross-sectional data in cases where management researchers aim to expand beyond well-documented and longitudinal data sets.

This research offers practical recommendations for SMEs to improve their sustainable performance through networking. SMEs should seek partnerships with complementary knowledge to improve operations and for other performance-oriented benefits.

This study adds significantly to the literature on sustainable SME performance by studying the interdependent effects of networking capabilities. It also represents the individual and sequential mediation mechanism that links networking capabilities to SME success through knowledge worker productivity and digital innovation.

International new ventures have been argued to seek foreign markets from inception in response to the external environment and/or motivations internal to the firm. For example, a new venture that exists in an industry that is more globally integrated is more likely to have a need to internationalize in order to remain competitive (Shrader, Oviatt, & McDougall, 2000). Similarly, those new ventures that have limited domestic growth due to the size of their home country may look elsewhere in order to gain a sufficient level of sales to survive (Zahra & George, 2002). Some of the many firm-specific motivations to internationalize might include the desire to fully exploit a unique product (Burgel & Murray, 2000; Oviatt & McDougall, 1994, 1995), capitalize on the learning advantage of newness (Autio, Sapienza, & Almeida, 2000) or take advantage of networking opportunities (Reuber & Fischer, 1997).

The study this chapter reports focuses on how network theory contributes to the understanding of the internationalization process of SMEs and measures the effect of network capability on performance in international trade and has three research objectives.

The first objective of the study relates to providing new insights into the international market development activities through the application of a network perspective. The chapter reviews the international business literature to ascertain the development of thought, the research gaps, and the shortcomings. This review shows that the network perspective is a useful and popular theoretical domain that researchers can use to understand international activities, particularly of small, high technology, resource-constrained firms.

The second research objective is to gain a deeper understanding of network capability. This chapter presents a model for the impact of network capability on international performance by building on the emerging literature on the dynamic capabilities view of the firm. The model conceptualizes network capability in terms of network characteristics, network operation, and network resources. Network characteristics comprise strong and weak ties (operationalized as foreign-market entry modes), relational capability, and the level of trust between partners. Network operation focuses on network initiation, network coordination, and network learning capabilities. Network resources comprise network human-capital resources, synergy-sensitive resources (resource combinations within the network), and information sharing within the network.

The third research objective is to determine the impact of networking capability on the international performance of SMEs. The study analyzes 11 hypotheses through structural equations modeling using LISREL. The hypotheses relate to strong and weak ties, the relative strength of strong ties over weak ties, and each of the eight remaining constructs of networking capability in the study. The research conducts a cross-sectional study by using a sample of SMEs drawn from the telecommunications industry in Ireland.

The study supports the hypothesis that strong ties are more influential on international performance than weak ties. Similarly, network coordination and human-capital resources have a positive and significant association with international performance. Strong ties, weak ties, trust, network initiation, synergy-sensitive resources, relational capability, network learning, and information sharing do not have a significant association with international performance. The results of this study are strong (R2=0.63 for performance as the outcome) and provide a number of interesting insights into the relations between collaboration or networking capability and performance.

This study provides managers and policy makers with an improved understanding of the contingent effects of networks to highlight situations where networks might have limited, zero, or even negative effects on business outcomes. The study cautions against the tendency to interpret networks as universally beneficial to business development and performance outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between capabilities and renewal of organizational and business know-how in franchise networks.

This work uses a comparative case study of adaptive, absorptive and innovative capabilities to investigate knowledge renewal in 16 franchise networks.

The findings show that adaptive and innovative capabilities complement each other to foster know-how renewal. Furthermore, networks without internal R&D need to mobilize adaptive, absorptive and innovative capabilities to renew both organizational and business know-how. The findings also highlight that the three capabilities are interconnected.

The results of this research could provide insights for franchise networks to regenerate their knowledge base and ensure their long-term survival.

The underlying capabilities that explain organizational and business know-how renewal in franchises have not been investigated.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of structural and relational network capabilities on trust, and its effect on pricing and selling capabilities, as well as their influence on the enterprise social impact.

An explanatory and cross-sectional design was conducted, and 100 managers of Mexican social enterprises were surveyed.

Network structural capability did not affect trust, nevertheless network relational capability did. Likewise, trust influenced pricing and selling capabilities, and these affected the enterprise social impact.

Although a sufficient number of entrepreneurs participated by responding to the survey, the results cannot be generalized to all social enterprises in Mexico.

Social enterprises should capitalize on the development of network relational capability and network structural capability because it facilitates access to scarce resources and positioning of the enterprise to act more actively as an agent of change in its network.

This research identifies the relevance for social enterprises to develop and capitalize on networking and marketing capabilities in their management routines and activities, as this can significantly enhance their social impact.

The main research contributions revealed the importance of dynamic capabilities and their effects on the impact of social enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize how information technology (IT) enables supply chain (SC) network capabilities, which is to capitalize on SC’s existing set of resources and, at the same time, manage new combinations of SC resources to meet future market needs. The paper also develops SCM framework associated with IT-enabled SC network capabilities.

Through a case study of a leading Taiwanese petrochemical corporation, qualitative data were gathered on the IT-related SC management practices, in terms of network resource mobilizing and adaptive co-management arrangements to enable SC network capability. This research is based primarily on the interviews of the case company, supplemented by archived documents, published books, and in-depth observations.

Based on the evidence from the case, this study inductively develops a model that includes the operating processes with IT-enabled activities to achieve ambidextrous SC network capability, and the relevant framework functions in network resources and co-management activities include information co-governance, information interoperability, community engagement strategy, cyber-physical dexterity, and control enactment, which lead the SC alliances improvements for dynamic environmental changes.

Practitioners may derive strategies and tactics from the current findings to help them implement innovative information technologies and setup SC framework, during SC network capability development, to achieve SC’s sustainable competence in a dynamic market.

Researchers and practitioners may obtain a more complete view of IT-enabled SC network capability development. The proposed model reveals that developing IT-enabled SC network capabilities is a dynamic process whereby an organization’s major SC managerial activities are divided into specific network resource mobilizing and adaptive co-management arrangements.

This study aims to explore the influence of a region’s network location characteristics and indirect connections on its innovation capability. The aim is to assist regions in different network locations to use innovation resources to improve their innovation capabilities more efficiently.

This paper represents the Chinese regional innovation network using the gravity model. A theoretical framework is developed to explore the relationships between a region’s innovation capability and its network location. Hypotheses are tested using hierarchical regressions.

First, this paper finds that a region’s network centrality can promote its innovation capability. Second, a structural hole can positively adjust the relationship between a region’s centrality and innovation capability. Third, a region’s indirect connections can inhibit its innovation capability while exhibiting a U-shaped relationship in moderating centrality and innovation capability.

This study uses a multi-index system to construct an innovation network covering 29 regions in China. This network represents the innovation cooperation and overall situation of innovation in China. The paper is one of the first attempts at investigating the relationship between regional network locations and innovation capability. It is also the first attempt at testing the influence of indirect connections on a region’s innovation capability. The findings provide a new perspective on the factors influencing regional innovation capacity and a new way for regions to improve their innovation capability.

Prior research suggests that insufficient networking capability of a firm (i.e. the capability to establish, maintain, and leverage ties, contacts and connections) poses a potential barrier to its growth, the causal logic of networking capability and firm performance has not been fully articulated and a clear link between network resources and networking capability, however, remains to be demonstrated. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Conceptually and theoretically, the paper emphasizes the importance of networking capability in network resources mobilization and deployment, innovation and rent-seeking and argues that the firm should build strong networking capability to creatively and artfully manage its networks to sustain its vitality.

The paper builds a theoretical model relating networking capability, network resources, open innovation, and resulting new venture success and economic rents. The paper argues that new ventures should build and leverage networking capability to manage network relationships and resources to innovate, develop and create value, and appropriate various types of economic rent.

The framework generally promoted building networking capability as a means of accessing to a broader range of network resources and opportunities than a new venture is able to maintain internally for innovation and growth, the benefits may not be so clear-cut. A useful future research direction would be to determine empirically the relationship between networking capability and new ventures' survival and growth, the extent to which new ventures are able to derive economic rents from exploiting networking capability, and how this is related to the degrees of competitive success they attain.

The research framework suggests that networking capability can help new ventures to take advantage of opportunities discovered and serve unexploited markets. The study implies that networking capability can be a powerful weapon for new ventures to implement open innovation strategy to build solid growth businesses and to gain sustainable competitive advantage.

The paper develops a parsimonious model that links new venture survival and success with networking capability, network resources and open innovation. Also, this model shows why and how new ventures can leverage networking capability to generate and appropriate economic rent simultaneously.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a B2B firm can improve its value appropriation from industrial buyer–seller relationships by leveraging its network capability, as well as the curvilinear moderating role of the firm’s network embeddedness.

This paper empirically examines seven research hypotheses about the relationship between network capability and value appropriation and the curvilinear moderating effect of network embeddedness based on a questionnaire survey among 232 Chinese B2B firms.

It is found that network capability helps sellers appropriate value from industrial buyer–seller relationships via information acquisition, network resources and power. The mediating effect of network resources is the highest, followed by power and information acquisition. In addition, a seller’s embeddedness in a business network positively moderates the network capability and value appropriation link in an inverted U-shaped way.

The study makes significant contributions to the literature on value appropriation and also provides insightful implications for B2B firms to capture value from industrial buyer–seller relationships by leveraging network capability and network embeddedness.