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1 – 10 of over 111000Snejina Michailova and Kseniya Nechayeva
This paper examines how personal networks influence the internationalization process of Russian multinational corporations.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines how personal networks influence the internationalization process of Russian multinational corporations.
Design/methodology/approach
We identify and review 78 articles published in five International Business journals that address the role of networking and relationships in firm internationalization. We then use the network perspective to examine how Russian multinationals internationalize.
Findings
Combining the key conclusions of the reviewed studies with insights from the network perspective, and adding insights that we have gained both through first-hand experience and by following the Russian business media, we develop a model that links personal networking and Russian multinationals’ internationalization. We outline four functions that personal networking plays – access to information and knowledge, resource commitment, development of marketing and sales capabilities, and further network expansion.
Originality/value
This paper challenges established views of how firm internationalization occurs. It combines two previously unrelated streams of literature, the network model of internationalization and the role of personal networking within the Russian business environment, and argues that personal networking plays a much larger role in how Russian MNCs internationalize than has the International Business literature has acknowledged.
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Lars‐Gunnar Mattsson and Asta Salmi
This paper aims to discuss the important and changing role of personal networks for transformation in Russia, and the related challenges for management. Formal institutions…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to discuss the important and changing role of personal networks for transformation in Russia, and the related challenges for management. Formal institutions supporting the transformation to a market economy have been weak and Russian managers still tend to rely on personal networks. While these networks are important in all economies, they play a different role in full‐fledged market economies than in planned economies.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is conceptual and is based on literature on the nature of markets, the Soviet planned economy, and the transformation process in Russia. A business network approach is used to understand markets and focus on the dynamics of overlapping business and personal networks.
Findings
Overlapping between business networks involving non‐Russian networks and between personal and business networks are important drivers of transformation. The challenges for management in Russia are both organizational and strategic, and transformation implies substantial changes in the network structures.
Research limitations/implications
The authors recommend further empirical analysis of the role that the overlapping of business and personal networks plays in transformation, as well as its managerial implications.
Practical implications
This paper shows why firms must build business relationships during transformation that are integrated in nature and in which personal relations support the technical, logistical, financial, and knowledge exchange dimensions.
Originality/value
This paper challenges the dominating view of transformation, which says that market exchange is transactional, impersonal, and competition‐driven. The paper analyzes transformation in Russia as a network overlapping process in which the role of personal relations changes.
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The purpose of this paper is to, built upon Johanson and Vahlne’s (2009) Business Network Internationalization Process Model, explore the role of personal networks and business…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to, built upon Johanson and Vahlne’s (2009) Business Network Internationalization Process Model, explore the role of personal networks and business networks and their impact on foreign market knowledge and performance among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) after international market entry.
Design/methodology/approach
With a total mailing list of 2,250 US firms, data were collected via a mail survey in accordance with the methods of Dillman et al. (2008).
Findings
An empirical analysis of 105 SME cases revealed that business networks increased foreign market knowledge, which in turn also heightened the international performance of the SMEs. This confirmed the mediating role of market knowledge between business networks and international performance. Personal networks, however, provided little support in helping SMEs achieve foreign market knowledge and international performance.
Originality/value
This study contributes unique empirical evidence demonstrating that business network internationalization models can be applicable to the context of SMEs; that is, having access to such a network (i.e. a business network) is found to be a critical factor of international performance.
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This paper illuminates the distinction between individual and organizational actors in business-to-business markets as well as the coexistence of formal and informal mechanisms of…
Abstract
This paper illuminates the distinction between individual and organizational actors in business-to-business markets as well as the coexistence of formal and informal mechanisms of coordination in multinational corporations. The main questions addressed include the following. (1) What factors influence the occurrence of personal contacts of foreign subsidiary managers in industrial multinational corporations? (2) How such personal contacts enable coordination in industrial markets and within multinational firms? The theoretical context of the paper is based on: (1) the interaction approach to industrial markets, (2) the network approach to industrial markets, and (3) the process approach to multinational management. The unit of analysis is the foreign subsidiary manager as the focal actor of a contact network. The paper is empirically focused on Portuguese sales subsidiaries of Finnish multinational corporations, which are managed by either a parent country national (Finnish), a host country national (Portuguese) or a third country national. The paper suggests eight scenarios of individual dependence and uncertainty, which are determined by individual, organizational, and/or market factors. Such scenarios are, in turn, thought to require personal contacts with specific functions. The paper suggests eight interpersonal roles of foreign subsidiary managers, by which the functions of their personal contacts enable inter-firm coordination in industrial markets. In addition, the paper suggests eight propositions on how the functions of their personal contacts enable centralization, formalization, socialization and horizontal communication in multinational corporations.
Jalleh Sharafizad and Kerry Brown
The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of personal and inter-firm networks and the elements that contribute to the formation and management of these networks for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of personal and inter-firm networks and the elements that contribute to the formation and management of these networks for regional small businesses.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 small business owners located in regional areas.
Findings
The findings highlight key characteristics of regional small business owners’ networks. Findings indicated that participants relied strongly on their personal networks for business purposes. This study shows that while personal networks adapted and changed into informal inter-firm networks, weak-tie relations within inter-firm networks were unlikely to develop into close personal networks. Novel findings also include a preference for “regional interactions” and included regular collaboration with local business competitors. Although the participants used social media to manage their business through personal networks, results confirmed there was a lack of awareness of the benefits of inter-firm networks with businesses outside the local region.
Originality/value
While it is acknowledged small business owners use personal and inter-firm connections to maintain and grow their business, there is a lack of research examining both of these networks in the same study. This research addresses this gap and presents five propositions as a useful direction for future research. This paper adds to the evolution of existing knowledge by expanding understanding of the formation of business networks and conditions of business trust relations within a regional context.
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Victor Rodrigues de Oliveira, Wallace Patrick Santos de Farias Souza, Giácomo Balbinotto Neto and Paulo de Andrade Jacinto
This paper investigates the relationship between (1) business cycle and use of personal contacts to obtain job and (2) use of personal contacts to obtain job and wages.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper investigates the relationship between (1) business cycle and use of personal contacts to obtain job and (2) use of personal contacts to obtain job and wages.
Design/methodology/approach
For this, we use data from the Monthly Employment Survey (2002–2015) from Brazil which has detailed information on individual and job characteristics. In addition, we investigate the impact of referrals on wage using quantile regressions.
Findings
Time-varying parameter estimates indicate that the relationship between business cycle and use of personal contacts became less countercyclical over time. In general, they show that there is more evidence of a slow changing relationship between personal contacts and the business cycle over time rather than a sudden and discrete one. Using quantile regressions, we observed that, controlling for similar observable characteristics, and including unobserved heterogeneity, wage differences between workers using personal contacts versus workers using others channels disappear. The evidences indicate that workers resort to personal contacts because of valuation of non-pecuniary job characteristics.
Practical implications
The results suggest that, in designing subsidy or affirmative action programs, attention to network effects is important. Social networks can help labor markets run more smoothly by alleviating information frictions.
Originality/value
This study extends the existing literature by providing empirical evidence of the use of personal contacts for the Brazil. Although there are many studies and methods for measuring use of personal contacts, to our knowledge, there are no studies using a time-varying parameters model.
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Smaranda Boros and Lore Van Gorp
Integrating predictions of social exchange theory and implicit social cognition, this paper aims to investigate mechanisms of co-evolution between professional and personal…
Abstract
Purpose
Integrating predictions of social exchange theory and implicit social cognition, this paper aims to investigate mechanisms of co-evolution between professional and personal support networks in a professional, non-hierarchical setting.
Design/methodology/approach
The study covers simultaneously people’s behaviours and their subjective interpretations of them in a cross-lagged network design in a group of 65 MBA students.
Findings
Results show that people build on their professional support network to develop personal support relations. People who have a high status in the professional support network appear to be afraid to lose them by asking too many others for personal support and people with a low status in the professional support network seem also be reluctant to ask many others for personal support.
Practical implications
Although personal support is a key social mechanism facilitating individual well-being and organizational success, support in the workplace often remains limited to professional topics. This research shows why people hesitate to expand their networks in professional settings and to what extent their fears have a basis in reality.
Originality/value
It goes beyond predictions of social exchange theory which inform most network evolution studies and tap into implicit social cognition predictions to expand the explanatory power of the hypotheses. The study’s network analysis takes into account both behaviours and social perceptions. The sample is a non-hierarchical professional group which allows a more ecological observation of how hierarchies are born in social groups.
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This article aims to introduce the personal knowledge network (PKN) model as an alternative model to knowledge management (KM) and to discuss whether personal knowledge management…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to introduce the personal knowledge network (PKN) model as an alternative model to knowledge management (KM) and to discuss whether personal knowledge management (PKM) is better adapted to the demands of the new knowledge environments. The PKN model views knowledge as a personal network and represents a knowledge ecological approach to KM.
Design/methodology/approach
KM and PKM have attracted attention over the past two decades and are considered as important means to increase organizational and individual performance. In this article, the author reviews previous models of KM and PKM and explores their failure to address the problem of knowledge worker performance and to cope with the constant change and critical challenges of the new knowledge era. The author further highlights the crucial need for new KM models that have the potential to overcome the shortcomings of previous models. In light of these shortcomings, the article introduces and discusses the PKN model as an alternative model to KM and PKM that is better adapted to the demands of the new knowledge environments.
Findings
Unlike traditional KM/PKM models which view knowledge as a thing or process, the PKN model views knowledge as a personal network and represents a knowledge ecological approach to KM.
Originality/value
The article focuses on personal knowledge and the links to networks and knowledge ecologies in an innovative way for consideration within KM.
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Gerald Mollenhorst, Christofer Edling and Jens Rydgren
In this chapter, we focus on the social integration of young immigrants in Sweden who themselves and/or one or both of their parents came from Iran or former Yugoslavia. In…
Abstract
In this chapter, we focus on the social integration of young immigrants in Sweden who themselves and/or one or both of their parents came from Iran or former Yugoslavia. In particular, we look at the share of alters in their core networks who are of the same parental national origin and how this has changed within a period of four years. To explain network changes, we consider the parental national origin similarity among them, changes in opportunities to meet network members, and important life events.
We analyzed two waves of survey data collected in 2010 and 2014 from 1,537 individuals who live in Sweden and who were all born in 1990, including 325 immigrants from Iran, 447 immigrants from former Yugoslavia, and 805 native Swedes. The results indicate that: (a) the share of parental national origin similar alters in the core networks of immigrants significantly increases over time, (b) first-generation immigrants in particular increasingly associate with others who are of the same parental national origin, (c) important life events hardly result in network changes, and (d) schools and work places are social contexts that enhance the social integration of immigrants, because in these contexts immigrants meet and engage in personal relationships with individuals who do not share their parental national origin.
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