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This study aims to demonstrate the importance of organizational networks in organizational performance is relatively rich; less understood are processes in organizational networking that entrepreneurs and organizations use in making sense of rapidly changing contexts for organizational performance.

This study conducts an exploratory organizational-level narrative analysis into firms’ experiences in two major emerging markets (EMs), namely, Russia and India – to identify organizational networking processes in the midst of institutional upheavals. The study is based on in-depth case studies of firms in EMs sourced from interview data from senior management and consolidated with secondary data.

The authors find that initially firms rely on informal networks (including blat/svyazi and jaan-pehchaan/jan-pehchan) and later formal (in the form of bureaucratic followed by proprietary) networks to make sense of the changes and uncertainties in turbulent environments. The authors also demonstrate the cyclical nature of strategic sensemaking in the process of developing organizational networks for performance.

The study has a number of theoretical and practical contributions. First, it extends the well-established business networking construct to a more inclusive organizational networking construct. Second, it demonstrates that sensemaking is dependent on interorganizational networking from the outset and throughout the growth of an organization in turbulent markets – from informal to formal bureaucratic and proprietary networks. Finally, this study is unique in documenting the entire process of sensemaking from scanning to performance as well as successfully demonstrating the cyclical nature of sensemaking.

Abnormal behaviors such as rework, backlog, changes and claims generated by project organizations are unavoidable in complex projects. When abnormal behaviors emerge, the previously normal state of interactions between organizations will be altered to some extent. However, previous studies have ignored the associations and interactions between organizations in the context of abnormal organizational behaviors (AOBs), making this challenging to cope with AOBs. As a result, the objective of this paper is to explore how to reduce AOBs in complex projects at the organizational level from a network perspective.

To overcome the inherent limitations of a single case study, this research integrated two data collection methods: questionnaire survey and expert scoring method. The questionnaire survey captured the universal data on the influence possibility of AOBs between complex project organizations and the expert scoring method got the influence probability scores of AOBs between organizations in the case. Using these data, four organizational influence network models of AOBs based on a case were developed to demonstrate how to destroy AOBs networks in complex projects using network attack theory (NAT).

First, the findings show that controlling AOBs generated by key organizations preferentially and improving the ability of key organizations can weaken AOBs network, enabling more effective coping strategies. Second, the owners, government, material suppliers and designers are identified as key organizations across all four influence networks of AOBs. Third, change and claim behaviors are more manageable from the organizational level.

Project managers can target specific organizations for intervention, weaken the AOBs network by applying NAT and achieve better project outcomes through coping strategies. Additionally, by taking a network perspective, this research provides a novel approach to comprehending the associations and interactions between organizations in the context of complex projects.

This paper proposes a new approach to investigating AOBs in complex projects by simultaneously examining rework, backlog, change and claim. Leveraging NAT as a novel tool for managing the harmful effects of influence networks, this study extends the knowledge body in the field of organizational behavior (OB) management and complex project management.

The purpose of this study is to explore the interplay among self-organization, networks and sustainable innovations within microfinance institutions (MFIs) and to examine the extent to which organizational resilience plays a significant role in shaping these dynamics as a mediator.

This paper adopted a cross-sectional research design combined with analytical and descriptive approach to collect the data. Smart partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to construct the measurement model and structural equation model to test the mediating effect under this study.

The results revealed that organizational resilience is a significant mediator in the relationship between self-organization, networks and sustainable innovations among microfinance institutions in Uganda.

The data for this study were collected only from microfinance institutions in Uganda. Future studies may collect data from other formal financial institutions like commercial banks and credit institutions to test the mediating effect of organizational resilience. More still, the study adopted only a single approach of using a questionnaire. However, future research through interviews may be desirable. Likewise this study was cross-sectional in nature. Therefore, a longitudinal study may be useful in future while investigating the mediating role of organizational resilience traversing over a long time frame.

A possible implication is that microfinance institutions which desire to have sustainable innovative solutions for their business operations in disruptive circumstances may need to scrutinize their capacity to be resilient and self-organize.

Microfinance institutions play a great role to the underserved clients. Thus, for each to re-organize to be able to provide services that meet users’ needs, without physical products so as to ensure long-term financial and social welfare combined with the ability to bounce back and adapt in times of economic downturn to avoid mission adrift.

While most studies have been carried out on organizational resilience, this paper takes center stage and is the first to test the mediating role of organizational resilience in the relationship between self-organization, networks and sustainable innovations, especially in microfinance institutions in Uganda. This paper generates strong evidence and contributes to the powerful influence of organizational resilience in enhancing the level of sustainable innovations based on self-organization and networks.

This paper's purpose centres on advancing the current financialisation strategies within digital transformation (DT) through a rebalanced synthesis of both financialisation and people/centric, non-financialisation strategies of the DT field. Based on empirical data from Bahrain's energy sector, a new framework on People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership is developed, capturing DT's human values deficit and proposing a new model on financialisation and non-financialisation strategies showing ‘how’ and ‘why’ DT is implemented in contemporary organisations.

This study conducted a mixed methodology of narrative interviews, case studies and reviewed significant contributions from the DT, leadership and change management debates. A total of 26 operational and high-level leaders from Bahrain, 8 top energy companies and Braun and Clarke's 6-phase analysis were combined to form four empirical thematic bundles on ‘how’ and ‘why’ leaders adopted financialisation and non-financialisation strategies to resolve organisational sustainability issues in an Arabic context.

Four sets of findings (bundles 1–4) highlight participants' financial and structural understanding when implementing DT initiatives, the different leadership styles ranging from authoritarian to network leadership, the socio-economic, political and cultural ramifications of their practices and the urgency of staff reskilling for organisational resilience and strategic sustainability. Based on the eight energy cases and interviews, a new values-driven, People-centric Sustaining Network Leadership Model is developed to show a more effective and efficient use of financial and non-financial resources when organisations implement DT initiatives in efforts to resolve global energy sustainability problems.

Leadership, change management, DT, energy and environmental sustainability is a huge area of scholarship. While new studies emerge and contribute to this growing body of knowledge, this investigation has focused on those that significantly highlight how to make effective use of financialisation and non-financialisation resources. Therefore, all the literature on the topic has not been included. Although this study has filled the non-financialisation gap in current DT studies, a further rebalancing of the financialisation versus non-financialisation debates will be needed for theoreticians, practitioners and policy makers to continue addressing emerging and more complex socio-economic, political and cultural issues within and beyond organisations. Limitations are the study's focus on the Bahrain energy sector and the limited sample of 26 leaders.

The study provides practitioners and policy makers with an approach for the successful implementation of DT initiatives in the oil and gas sector. For academics, this study provides empirically unique and interesting thematic bundles, insightful analyses into leadership, organisational change, digital transformation and network leadership theories to develop an innovative and creative People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership Approach/Model on the practical barriers, implications/impacts of various leadership styles and potential solutions via a socio-cultural values-based alternative to the current financialisation discourse of DT.

While there is a growing body of literature on DT, Leadership and Organisational Transformation and Change, there is a dearth of scholarship on the human-orientated strategies of DT implementation outside of western contexts. A contemporary and comprehensive, empirically evidenced analysis of the field has led to the development of this study's People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership model which frames, captures, synthesises and extends the dominant cost-minimisation rhetoric of DT discourse to include a shared set of leadership practices, behaviours, intentions, perceptions and values. This helped to reveal the previously missing ‘how’ and ‘why’ of DT’s operational and strategic implementation.

Network embeddedness has been widely considered in enterprise innovation as an effective means of overcoming resource dilemmas. However, while focussing on acquiring external innovation resources, the existing research often ignores the vital role of internal routine updates. Therefore, this study explores the mechanism by which network embeddedness affects innovation performance of enterprises from the perspective of organisational routine updating.

This paper proposes a theoretical model based on social network theory and organisational routines–immune response theory. A total of 328 pieces of research data on high-tech enterprises in China were collected, and the hypotheses were verified using hierarchical regression analysis.

The results show that the two forms of network embeddedness – structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness, have a positive effect on enterprise innovation performance and a significant positive effect on organisational routine revision and organisational routine creation. Both organisational routine revision and organisational routine creation positively affect enterprise innovation performance and partially mediate the relationship between network embeddedness and enterprise innovation performance.

This conclusion provides a new perspective on the impact of network embeddedness on enterprise innovation performance and expands the related research on organisational routine updating. This study provides a theoretical reference for high-tech enterprises to improve their competitiveness and innovation performance through network embeddedness and organisational routine updating.

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.

Drawing on the organizational learning and relational governance literature, this study aims to advance a theoretical model to explain the export performance of emerging market export ventures.

This study selects quantitative methodology because the main objective of this study is to explore the role of export ventures’ performance (past) on guanxi networking, co-creation marketing strategies and present performance.

The empirical evidence suggests that guanxi networking and co-creation strategy can mediate the relationship between export venture performance in the preceding year and export venture performance in the following year. In addition, this study also provides some guidance for emerging market export ventures on how to build a strong guanxi networking and create opportunities for collaboration when the effect of export performance in the preceding year on current performance is absent.

The authors propose the inclusion of strategic guanxi networking-related factors (e.g. top executives’ ties with business-to-business customers, such as distributors in the host market) in the prior performance-current performance paradigm. The outcomes of this study also contribute to extant organizational learning theory research by integrating preceding performance research with the co-creation theory. The study offers new insights into organizational learning and relational governance from the emerging market perspective.

The authors investigate conditions that drive innovation performance in foreign-owned subsidiaries. The authors study five variables affecting innovation performance: organizational agility and digital capabilities as the main drivers and competencies and embeddedness in internal and external networks as complementary antecedents of innovation.

The authors draw on the neo-configurational perspective and apply fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to empirically test survey data from subsidiaries located in the emerging economies of Thailand and Vietnam.

While the authors find no single condition on its own determining innovation performance, the authors do find that in concert they form four configurations of high innovation performance. The results indicate that all configurations contain competencies, as well as that subsidiaries should prioritize between internal and external networks to complement agility, digital capabilities, to achieve high innovation performance. The authors also reveal intriguing contextual differences in the innovation performance configurations between the two host countries.

By incorporating causal complexity as well as substitutability and complementarity of innovation drivers, the authors extend the current understanding of subsidiary innovation performance outcomes.

The ongoing paradigm shift in the energy sector holds paramount implications for the realization of the sustainable development goals, encompassing critical domains such as resource optimization, environmental stewardship and workforce opportunities. Concurrently, this transformative trajectory within the power sector possesses a dual-edged nature; it may ameliorate certain challenges while accentuating others. In light of the burgeoning research stream on open innovation, this study aims to examine the intricate dynamics of knowledge-based industry-university-research networking, with an overarching objective to elucidate and calibrate the equilibrium of ambidextrous innovation within power systems.

The authors scrutinize the role of different innovation organizations in three innovation models: ambidextrous, exploitative and exploratory, and use a multiobjective decision analysis method-entropy weight TOPSIS. The research was conducted within the sphere of the power industry, and the authors mined data from the widely used PatSnap database.

Results show that the breadth of knowledge search and the strength of an organization’s direct relationships are crucial for ambidextrous innovation, with research institutions having the highest impact. In contrast, for exploitative innovation, depth of knowledge search, the number of R&D patents and the number of innovative products are paramount, with universities playing the most significant role. For exploratory innovation, the depth of knowledge search and the quality of two-mode network relations are vital, with research institutions yielding the best effect. Regional analysis reveals Beijing as the primary hub for ambidextrous and exploratory innovation organizations, while Jiangsu leads for exploitative innovation.

The study offers valuable implications to cope with the dynamic state of ambidextrous innovation performance of the entire power system. In light of the findings, the dynamic state of ambidextrous innovation performance within the power system can be adeptly managed. By emphasizing a balance between exploratory and exploitative strategies, stakeholders are better positioned to respond to evolving challenges and opportunities. Thus, the study offers pivotal guidance to ensure sustained adaptability and growth in the power sector’s innovation landscape.

The primary originality is to extend and refine the theoretical understanding of ambidextrous innovation within power systems. By integrating several theoretical frameworks, including social network theory, knowledge-based theory and resource-based theory, the authors enrich the theoretical landscape of power system ambidextrous innovation. Also, this inclusive examination of two-mode network structures, including the interplay between knowledge and cooperation networks, unveils the intricate interdependencies between these networks and the ambidextrous innovation of power systems. This approach significantly widens the theoretical parameters of innovation network research.

This paper aims to investigate the formation of an inter-organizational collaboration network that made it possible to repair 2,516 mechanical respirators that were inoperative in Brazil during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A qualitative approach was used in a single case study with semi-structured interviews. The interviewee selection process was non-probabilistic through snowball sampling.

The results suggest that society, through different social groups with their different roles, can organize itself quickly through the formation of collaborative networks, and this organizational configuration can be an alternative for facing crises where actions isolated would be insufficient or slow to urgently address complex situations.

This paper aims to (1) demonstrate that society, through different social groups with their different roles, can organize itself quickly through the formation of collaborative networks; (2) favor the understanding and dynamics of the formation of a network; and (3) contribute to a possible replication of this initiative in future contexts.

The case portrays an unprecedented formation of a collaboration network involving more than 144 organizations that mobilized quickly in a complex context of a pandemic and that generated remarkable results through the reintroduction of equipment that were responsible for the preservation of thousands of lives during the year from 2020.