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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 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.

This paper examines the relationship between supply chain network structures and firm financial performance and the moderating role of international relations. In this study, which is grounded in social capital theory and applies the perspective of systemic risk, the authors theorize the effects of supply chain network structures on firm performance.

The authors extracted data from two Chinese databases and constructed a supply chain network of the firms concerned based on nearly 4,300 supply chain relations between 2009 and 2018. The authors adopted the fixed effects model to investigate the relationship between supply chain network structures and firm financial performance.

The econometrics results indicate that network structures, including the degree, centrality, clustering coefficients and structural holes, are significantly related to firm financial performance. A significant and negative relationship exists between international relations and firm financial performance. The authors also find that international relations strongly weaken the relationship between supply chain network structures and firm financial performance.

This study, which collects secondary data from developing countries (e.g. China) and explores the impacts of supply chain network structures on firm stock performance, contributes to the existing literature and provides practical implications.

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.

Purpose – Social relations play an important role in a real community. Interaction patterns reveal relations among actors (such as persons, groups, firms), which can be merged to produce valuable information such as a network structure. This paper aims to present a new approach to extract inter‐firm networks from the web for further analysis. Design/methodology/approach – In this study extraction of relations between a pair of firms is obtained by using a search engine and text processing. Because names of firms co‐appear coincidentally on the web, an advanced algorithm is proposed, which is characterised by the addition of keywords (“relation keywords”) to a query. The relation keywords are obtained from the web using a Jaccard coefficient. Findings – As an application, a network of 60 firms in Japan is extracted including IT, communication, broadcasting, and electronics firms from the web and comprehensive evaluations of this approach are shown. The alliance and lawsuit relations are easily obtainable from the web using the algorithm. By adding relation keywords to named pairs of firms as a query, It is possible to collect target pages from the top of web pages more precisely than by only using the named pairs as a query. Practical implications – This study proposes a new approach for extracting inter‐firm networks from the web. The obtained network is useful in several ways. It is possible to find a cluster of firms and characterise a firm by its cluster. Business experts often make such inferences based on firm relations and firm groups. For that reason the firm network might enhance inferential abilities on the business domain. Also we might use obtained networks to recommend business partners based on structural advantages. The authors' intuition is that extracting a social network might provide information that is only recognisable from the network point of view. For example, the centrality of each firm is identified only after generating a social network. Originality/value – This study is a first attempt to extract inter‐firm networks from the web using a search engine. The approach is also applicable to other actors, such as famous persons, organisations or other multiple relational entities.

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.

In this study negotiated exchange under the 1-exchange rule is considered in the whole population of 142,660 exchange networks up to size 9. A review shows that 51 of these networks have been studied in the literature. Predictions for the whole population of networks are derived by parsimonious versions of power-dependence and exchange-resistance theory. All but 301 networks are classified similarly as equal, weak, or strong power networks by the power-dependence and exchange-resistance theory. Only 4% of the networks is classified as a strong power network, as opposed to the 43% of the networks studied in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to study international opportunities gained through co‐opetitive relations in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as to examine the influence of different levels of co‐opetition on international opportunities.

In order to achieve the purpose, multiple in‐depth case studies are conducted in four SMEs.

The results reveal a paradigm shift in competition in an international context. Co‐opetition has provided international opportunities for the case companies, though to varying degrees and character. Furthermore, international opportunities can be found in strong and weak cooperation‐dominated relations as well as in equal relations between competitors. However, the different levels of co‐opetition influence the characteristics of the international opportunities in terms of continuity and scope.

The results highlight the importance of taking co‐opetitive relations in general as well as the different levels of co‐opetition within these relations into consideration when analyzing the exploration and exploitation of international opportunities in SMEs. The results are, however, limited by the number of cases analyzed and further research on a larger scale is needed in order to draw additional conclusions.

The influence of various co‐opetitive relations found on international opportunities and competitiveness brings to light the value for companies to focus on and to develop these relations as well as to maintain a variety of cooperative relations with their competitors in the internationalization process.

The paper increases the knowledge on a yet largely unexplored, but significant topic, which is valuable both from a practical‐ and a research‐oriented perspective.

The paper identifies a role for public relations in disaster management by analysing disaster and communication managers' understanding of community resilience and their use of communication in the context of two different cultural environments.

The research study comprised 51 in-depth qualitative interviews with disaster managers in Sri Lanka and New Zealand, which were thematically analysed using the software programme NVivo 10.

The study identified cultural differences in Sri Lanka and New Zealand that impact on how managers' communicate in natural disaster situations. The findings indicated that public relations’ understanding of communities’ cultures, their communication, networking and lobbying skills could further enhance the effectiveness of efforts to build community resilience to disasters.

Nations are complex multicultural realities; the findings cannot be generalized to make claims about how natural disasters are managed in different national contexts.

The paper identifies the unrealized potential of public relations’ expertise in communication, community relations, networking and lobbying to contribute to building community resilience to natural disasters.

By supporting efforts to build community resilience to disasters, public relations practitioners can contribute to social well-being in times of catastrophic natural disasters.

The paper adds an innovative perspective to public relations crisis literature by identifying the potential contribution of public relations’ concepts and practices to build community resilience to natural disasters. It demonstrates how sociocultural differences may affect disaster communication strategies.

This paper explains why some firms manage to capture disproportionate value from their network of relationships, leading to superior performance. The paper examines how a firm's dependencies affect its value appropriation potential (VAP) in economic networks.

The paper follows the axiomatic method and the embeddedness perspective of firms to develop an index called nodal power, which captures the power that accrues to a firm in exchange-based economic networks. Thereafter, using the formal method and simulation, it shows nodal power reflects a firm's VAP in economic networks.

The study analysis and findings prove that a firm's dyadic level exchange relations and the embedded network structure determine its VAP by affecting the nodal power. A firm with lesser nodal power is likely to appropriate less value from its relations even if it equally contributes to the value creation. This finding explains how the structural and relational characteristics of a firm's network enable disproportionate value appropriation.

Nodal power furthers the scope of analyzing firms' economic relationships and changing power equations in dynamic networks. It can help firms build optimal strategic networks and manage the portfolio of relationships by predicting the impact of changing relations on firms' VAP.

The paper's original contribution is to explain, through formal analysis, why and how the structure and nature of relations of firms affect their VAP. The paper also formalizes the power-dependence principle through a dependency-based index called nodal power and uses it to show how interfirm dependencies are key to value appropriation.