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The purpose of this paper is to understand the effect of the network contract (NC) on the internationalization of Italian firms to evaluate whether and how network characteristics, management perceptions and governance influence firms’ degree of internationalization (DOI).

By using the data from a survey of 350 Italian firms that joined a network in 2012, hierarchical regression analyses were applied to test four hypotheses.

Network size and diversity as well as management attitudes and perceptions influence firms’ exports. However, only network diversity is positively related to the number of markets in which firms operate. A positive direct effect of network diversity on network managers’ activities and a significantly indirect effect via network managers’ activities also exist.

Network diversity is crucial for achieving better results in foreign markets. Interacting with diverse network participants can help firms manage diversity, expressed in terms of information, resources and competencies, helping overcome the barriers that hinder the internationalization process. The presence of an efficient network manager should facilitate the achievement of firms’ internationalization objectives.

This research is one of the first studies to analyze the effects of an Italian NC on firms’ internationalization. From a theoretical standpoint, it adds to the literature a specific analysis that relates primarily to small firms, showing that, in this context, the results are not always consistent with those of prior studies.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that the resources that a firm owns and has full control (firm-level resources) and resources that a firm access through direct connection with other firms (network-level resources) will impact firm innovation when effectively deployed by the firm. While previous research examined these factors separately, the author takes a holistic view and looks into their effects on innovation simultaneously. The author also introduces the moderating effects, i.e. the variables that can enhance firm innovation through their interaction with internal and external resources.

The author tested the role of financial resources and slack resources in the form of cash slack and human slack at the firm level, and network size, network tie strength, and network diversity at the network level on the firm innovation. Using generalized negative binomial model with Huber-White procedure, the author analyzed 306 firms from the biotechnology industry over a span of 17 years.

The analysis suggests that cash slack impact innovation negatively. However, this link is moderated by firm size such that for large firms cash slack affects innovation positively. Network-level resources all positively impact innovation and have more economic impact on firm innovation than firm-level resources. Furthermore, although human slack negatively affects innovation, its interaction with network size enhances innovation.

The research makes important contributions to both strategic management and innovation literatures especially when, the author considers the role of firm-level slack in driving firm innovation. Previous research reported conflicting findings about the availability of slack resources and firm performance. The results showed that the relationship between slack resources and firm innovation is negative and significant, both for available slack and human slack. This finding parallels with previous research which reported that constraints such as lack of slack resources can actually facilitate innovation. The author also contributes to the literature by introducing boundary conditions which can enhance firm innovation through their interaction with firm-level internal and network-level external resources. In this respect, to the author’s knowledge, this is among the first studies to combine the slack literature focusing on firm-level resources with the literature on network-level resources.

The paper aims to understand how individuals differ in individual absorptive capacity – their ability to recognize, assimilate, transform and exploit external knowledge. These individual absorptive capacities are a key knowledge management building block for an organization’s open innovation practices. The study examines individual antecedents – human capital, social capital and cognition – and innovation outcomes of individual absorptive capacity.

This is a quantitative study of 147 employees in a single medium-sized Dutch industrial firm. Based on a survey and structural equation modeling, the antecedents’ prior knowledge diversity, network diversity and cognitive style are examined in relation to individual absorptive capacity. Further, the mediating effects of individual absorptive capacity on its antecedents and innovation outcome are investigated.

The main findings are that prior knowledge diversity, external network diversity and a bisociative cognitive style explain differences in individual absorptive capacity. A bisociative cognitive style appears to be the most important factor. Also, this study finds that individual absorptive capacity mediates between its antecedents and individual innovation performance and is therefore a relevant factor to capture value from external knowledge sources.

The study extends open innovation theory by exploring individual-level factors that explain the ability to capture value from external knowledge. It suggests that differences in open innovation practices are explained by heterogeneity at the individual level. Further, it explains how individuals’ potentials for open innovation are mediated by their absorptive capacities. These insights enable future researchers to further examine individual-level factors in knowledge management practices and to explore cross-level individual-organizational interactions for open innovation.

This paper highlights that individuals’ engagements in open innovation practices are explained not only by individuals’ motivations but also by their abilities to absorb external knowledge. Further, it helps managers to design knowledge management practices to promote employees’ absorptive capacities, to improve open innovation processes.

This study investigates the neglected individual-level factors of open innovation practices from a micro-foundational and knowledge management perspective. To our best knowledge, this is the first study to examine individual-level antecedents and outcomes of individual absorptive capacity.

Studies on inter-firm relationships have recently shifted their attention from dyadic networks to more globally driven network structures. This condition occurs because embeddedness in global network structures may improve firm innovation and performance. In addition, the improvement of firm innovativeness and performance seems higher when globally networked firms both compete and cooperate between and among them. In this paper, we categorize the simultaneous interplay of cooperation and competition in the global arena as global network coopetition (GNC). Under GNC, multinational enterprises act jointly with their global partners-rivals to improve performance, at the same time by sharing complementary resources (cooperation side) and by undertaking independent actions to enhance their own performance (competition side). This paper aims to expand existing research on network and global coopetition by shedding light on the effects of coopetition between and among firms belonging to global network structures on value capture and innovation performance.

Using a sample of 100 firms belonging to 14 industries organized in 47 global networks of different sizes, the authors conducted a longitudinal empirical study over the period 2000-2014 covering 1,098 observations, 1,717 interfirm relationships and 78 inter-networks linkages. A multiple regression model on panel data with random effects was conducted on the sample of 1,098 observations related to the global automotive industry to test the research hypotheses.

Findings show that GNC enhances firm performance and innovation outcomes. In addition to GNC, structural characteristics such as network size, network position and network diversity have significant positive or negative effects on innovation and performance outcomes of firms belonging to these global network structures.

Our research offers a contribution to the literature dealing with global networked structures’ effects on firm innovation performance. In fact, it effectively complements prior work on outcomes of coopetition between firms embedded in complex network structures. It also advances research in the area by introducing the notion of GNC as a network by which firms can enhance their innovation performance and, therefore, their global innovation performance. This study has some limitations. First, we acknowledge that it is focused only on 14 global coopetitive networks. It could be promising to extend the scope to integrate other networks. Second, our measures of firm actions as based on a content analysis of news reports related to firms. It would be important to complement this data collection by conducting a qualitative analysis (interviews). Atlast, it could be promising to include the study of customer needs in the new product development process.

Our study also offers some insights into the management of coopetition. In fact, by taking into account the existence of a context in which global coopetition networks play a role, managers may be better positioned to effectively deal with the paradox of being a partner of their direct rivals to improve their firms’ innovativeness and, consequently, achieve good performance, on the one hand, and to maintain relationships within several networks by taking into account their structural properties such as centrality and diversity, on the other hand.

We contribute to extant network coopetition literature in two ways. First, we introduce the notion of GNC to detect coopetition occurrence in global network structures. GNC refers to a context where actors in various networks belonging to different industries and geographies cooperate in a one (or more) innovative project/s, while simultaneously keeping on competing within and between their networks. Second, we contribute to network coopetition by analyzing specific GNC effects on firm innovation performance. In so doing, we can provide a deeper analytical understanding of GNC performance effects on firms operating in global network contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of how two types of informal social networks – those related to instrumental purposes of information sharing and those related to expressive purposes of interpersonal trust – impact teachers’ job satisfaction.

This paper uses social network analysis (SNA) degree and betweenness measures and job satisfaction scales from the Job Diagnostic Survey to collect longitudinal data from employees in one of the vocational schools in Saint Petersburg, Russia via structured interviews. Data on a total of 354 ties were analysed for 40 ego networks in 2018 and 33 ego networks in 2019.

The obtained results partially confirm the positive effect of teachers’ position in instrumental and expressive networks on job satisfaction. More centrally positioned teachers were more satisfied with peers and colleagues. They feel more secure in regard to job security, given the unique and multi-faceted knowledge they possess. Structural diversity of the network, as well as the category of a teacher (core subject or vocational subject), are found to explain the uneven evolvement of network size. The authors argue that the decrease in network size can be treated as a positive externality of changes in an informal network. The variation in teachers’ experience seems to explain both job satisfaction and network composition.

The paper is based on a case study and its findings are limited to one particular organization. Nonetheless, the proposed SNA application is of potential value for similar organizations in terms of enhancing their capacity to benefit from networks. This study uses a structured interview to collect network data and job satisfaction data. However, overt observation or secondary data on written communication (e-mail, reports) may provide additional insights about the sought impact in the context of school.

Both teachers and managers benefit from the results of the paper. Educational policymakers and schools’ administration can exploit the bird’s eye view on an organization that SNA provides. By identifying focal employees and their attitude towards school, one receives an opportunity to prevent structural holes, organizational conflicts and uneven distribution of workload. Novice teachers can nurture their well-being by enhancing personal and instrumental social networks at the start of their careers. Experienced teachers benefit from social cooperation as it fosters the exchange of experience and skills, which is vital for job retention.

This research extends the understanding of the role of different kinds of social networks in teachers’ job satisfaction. The paper provides new insights into the SNA application to vocational schools and developing economies. Authors address teachers’ informal networks both from ego and complete network analyses to provide the holistic, yet detailed view. The use of longitudinal data advances the understanding of how personal and group networks develop over time.

This paper aims to propose an analytical framework in which to study ambidexterity in the management of policy networks. The paper is inspired by the concept of organizational ambidexterity in the public sector (Smith and Umans, 2015). By focusing on policy networks fostered by public administration with the aim of supporting small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) innovation, the paper elaborates on the links between firm innovation and performance and regional development. The cases analyzed are policy networks fostered by two publicly owned county development agencies in the Basque Country (Spain). An analytical framework emerges from bridging the gap between theory and practice. By understanding ambidexterity as a dynamic capability, the authors found that key ambidexterity drivers are related to network features (motivation to balance exploration and exploitation and diversity in terms of participants) and the individual feature of diversity within the network management group. However, other individual characteristics (leadership style) and territorial features (local institutional capacity) did not provide conclusive insights, calling for a deeper analysis and complex models to capture specific nuances.

The method used in the empirical part of the paper is the case study, as it considers the contextual conditions pertaining to a phenomenon (Yin, 2009) and helps understand present dynamics in specific contexts (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2009). Flyvbjerg (2006) examines common misunderstandings about case studies to conclude that social science may be strengthened by the execution of greater number of good case studies. Following his arguments, the authors consider that practical knowledge is also valuable together with theory, that is why the framework is not derived exclusively form theory but from the interaction and mutual influence of theory and practice.

The case studies lead to a discussion on the effect of network, territorial and individual characteristics (including management/facilitation modes) on network outcomes, including innovation performance of firms and network sustainability. Additionally, these cases show the importance of different factors as necessary conditions and key discriminants when supporting ambidextrous networks. The case analysis and the integration of the theory in this analysis allow observing the evolution of both networks, developing some conclusions on the core factors that influenced these trajectories, thus proposing an analytical framework. Specifically, it can be seen that some of the factors conditioned the ambidextrous strategy of the network.

The main implication of the paper in practice is that the concept of ambidexterity and the framework developed to understand some of its features are a useful tool to diagnose policy networks. The impact in society inspired in this implication is that authors, through the discussion workshops mentioned in the methodology section, have helped the community of policy network managers in Gipuzkoa reflect and improve their strategies and consider the potential of not exclusively focusing on exploration or exploitation. Consequently, the impact on society, in this case on policy networks in the region, has gone beyond the cases studied.

The paper proposes the concept of ambidexterity as one that helps analyze the ability of policy networks to foster SMEs innovation. Managerial literature has extensively analyzed the importance of modes to foster ambidexterity within organizations (Gibson and Birkenshaw, 2004; He and Wong, 2004; Levinthal and March, 1993; Lubatkin et al., 2006) and also its individual dimension (Volery et al., 2015). Managerial focus on policy networks and its link to organizational ambidexterity thus remain understudied. Although private sector literature has explored both concepts, the relation between them has not been analyzed (Smith and Umans, 2015).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the changing of institutional logics in an established field shapes the developmental networks of high‐achievers.

This research combines time series analysis of more than 80 years of historical data (1922‐2004) with qualitative analysis of induction speeches of 99 hall of fame players from the same period.

Findings indicate that a change in field logics from a more staid “insular” logic to a market or more business‐oriented logic coincided with changes in key players' developmental networks. In particular, the key players' self‐identified developmental relationships become both more numerous and more diverse in nature. Results of the time series analysis connect the shift in logic with the late 1950s which was an important time in Major League Baseball's history. It was during this period that, for the first time, each team had at least one African American player on their roster and each team had an average of at least one full‐time scout based in a country outside the USA – both indicators of MLB's increasingly global search for talent.

The study focuses on extraordinary career performers (versus all performers) in an all‐male professional sport where the nature of the sport and the number of organizations remains relatively stable over time.

These findings show how changes to industry level logics can affect individual level changes in mentoring and developmental networks. In particular, they demonstrate how organizations can create and remove potential developer roles as their respective logics change from era to era.

This is the first known study to explore the effect of macro level changes on mentoring and developmental networks at the individual level.

The existing literature on business incubators has rarely addressed network establishments thus far. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the process of network formation and its structure during the incubator creation process. The study focuses on establishing a network involving three key types of partners in the initial phase of setting up four agribusiness incubators. These partners come from universities, research organisations and private companies operating in a developing context.

This study uses social network theory, using a combination of qualitative and network survey approaches in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia. The qualitative data were used to investigate partnership formation, while the network survey was conducted to map the organisational network of business incubator partners. Constructs of social network theory, including relational content, relational form, centrality of actors and instrumentality, were qualitatively measured in this study.

The findings indicate that partners rely on previous informal relationships, which are formalised during the creation of business incubator partnerships. In the African context, once these relationships are formalised, they become part of what is referred to as business networks, irrespective of the nature of the relationship content. Personal networks serve as precursors to establishing organisational networks that cater to incubated firms. Incubator partners facilitate the networking process and enhance the formation of new connections in the early-stage partnership-based tripartite business incubators. They act as brokers, bridging structural holes by coordinating actors across the hole and linking disconnected nodes by activating their sub-networks. The results reveal that the partners' level of embeddedness in various organisational settings increases the diversity of contacts integrated into the incubator networks. In terms of relational content, partners tend to perceive the ties as business-oriented, even though the content of the relationship may differ. The strength of relationships depends on their formalization and the frequency of interaction.

The findings of the study contradict the reviewed social network literature, emphasising the necessity to adapt methodological approaches based on the cultural and institutional context in which they are applied. The social network questionnaire requires modification when used in different contexts and settings. Specifically, methodologies should be adjusted in situations where actors need to be discreet concerning their various relationships. It is important to note that organisational culture does influence actors' behaviours.

This study is deemed relevant to managers and practitioners of business incubators alike. It highlights that understanding the contextual factors that influence networking practices, the type and strength of networks and the resources provided to participants are crucial elements that should be considered in future policy and intervention initiatives.

This paper addresses the identified gap in examining network formation during the establishment of business incubators. The research is significant as it provides insights into networking at the incubator level of analysis within a tripartite business incubator setup. Ultimately, this paper helps increase our understanding of networking within the context of emerging countries.

The nature of immigration to the United States has varied tremendously over the course of the last 100 years. While the rate of immigrants in comparison to the total population was as high as 14% in the early 1900s, it steadily declined due to regulations passed at the beginning of the First World War reaching its lowest point in 1970 at less than 5% (Bernard, 1998). Yet, ever since the early 1970s, in response to the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments that replaced national-origin quotas with a single annual worldwide ceiling for all other immigrants while eliminating any numerical limitations for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, the number of immigrants has been continuously on the rise. In 1996, about 1 of every 10 residents in the United States was foreign born. This is exemplified by the fact that more than one fourth of the present foreign-born population of the United States arrived after 1990 (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2004).

The purpose of this paper is to examine expatriates' developmental networks in terms of their structure and content.

The study employed in‐depth interviews with 64 expatriate professionals and managers in Singapore and China.

The study highlights the unique characteristics of expatriates' developmental networks in cross‐cultural contexts including the nature of cross‐border and culturally diversified network structures, the dominance of psychosocial support, and the importance of cross‐cultural transition support.

Expatriates' self reports and retrospective sense‐making may suffer from hindsight bias and/or attribution bias. A longitudinal study that follows expatriates over time is necessary to examine relationship dynamics through different relocation stages.

The findings suggest the necessity for companies to recognize the limited role of formal mentoring in expatriates' overseas adjustment and relocation success, and to encourage a wider range of developmental relationships that comprise expatriates' developmental networks.

This paper makes two main contributions to the mentoring, developmental networks, and expatriate literature. First, it highlights the necessity of using “network base” as a new structural dimension of developmental networks to examine expatriation and repatriation adjustment. Second, it points out the importance of psychosocial and cross‐cultural transition support in expatriates' relocation success.