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The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of networks diversity on innovation activity of firms. It aims to review the structural issue in innovation networks and to distinguish different structures of networks for product and process innovation through an empirical research.

Using a data set of 348 European agri-food firms, the authors study the impact of bridge and redundant ties on product and process innovation of firms. This is an empirical research based on an online survey in five European countries.

The finding shows that bridge ties (measured by the number of heterogeneous networks in which firm participate) always facilitate product innovation in firms. The authors found also that a high number of heterogeneous ties in term of partners (simultaneous presence of redundant and non-redundant ties) motivate both product and process innovation in firms. Furthermore, the authors found a positive impact of network competence on process innovation.

The measures of bridge ties and redundant ties are indirect measures. This choice is a willing choice. Direct measurement of bridge and redundant ties always requires in-depth interviews with firms managers and thereby are limited by the number of observations.

Research on innovations networks are dominated by case studies and researches with limited number of observations. Studying the networking behaviour, particularly the tie selection, of a wide range of firms brings additional knowledge in this field of research.

Team‐based innovation requires a balance of creative and pragmatic processes both within teams and between teams and their organizational stakeholders. However, prior research has focused primarily on the internal team dynamics that facilitate innovation, paying comparatively little attention to team‐stakeholder dynamics. The purpose of this study is to address this limitation by studying the impact of team‐stakeholder networks and shared cognition on the effectiveness of innovation teams.

This study investigates the knowledge and trust linkages between 51 new product development (NPD) teams and their organizational stakeholders using a mixed methods design that combines network analysis, surveys, and qualitative interviews. Multiple indicators of team effectiveness were collected at various stages of the innovation process.

The results show that effective NPD teams establish knowledge ties with many non‐redundant organizational stakeholders and foster a high level of agreement among stakeholders about team innovation factors. Conversely, effective NPD teams also establish highly centralized trust networks that are focused on only a few key stakeholders in the organization.

This study focuses on NPD teams in chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Future studies should seek to replicate the findings using larger samples of teams involving diverse innovation tasks.

These results have implications for the most effective way to build and manage innovation teams, considering both pre‐existing stakeholder linkages and networking strategies for the future.

The results suggest that the optimal characteristics of team‐stakeholder knowledge and trust networks differ and highlight the unique importance of shared understanding about risk‐taking and creativity beyond higher overall levels.

Boundary-spanning exploration through establishing alliances is an effective strategy to explore technologies beyond local search in innovating firms. The purpose of this paper is to argue that it is useful to make a distinction in boundary-spanning exploration between what a firm learns from its alliance partners (explorative learning from partners (ELP)) and what it learns from other organisations (explorative learning from non-partners (ELN)).

The authors contend that alliances play a role in both types of exploration. More specifically, the authors discern three types of alliances (inside ties, clique-spanning ties and outside ties) based on their role vis-à-vis existing alliance cliques. Clique members are highly embedded, and breaking out of the cliques through clique-spanning and outside alliances is crucial to improving explorative learning. Thereafter, the authors claim that clique-spanning ties and outside ties have a different effect on ELN and ELP.

The empirical analysis of the “application specific integrated circuits” industry indicates that inside ties have negligible effects on both types of explorative learning. Clique-spanning ties have a positive effect on ELP, but not on ELN. The reverse is true for outside ties. The results show that research on explorative learning should devote greater attention to the various roles alliance partners and types of alliances play in advancing technological exploration.

The literature only emphasises the learning from partners, focussing mainly on accessing their technology. In sum, alliance partners play different roles in exploration, and their network position influences the role they are able to play.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of small and medium enterprises (SMEs)’ supply chain network on influencing credit quality, or more specifically, whether bridging tie (structural network) or strong tie (relational network) of SMEs in the supply chain can improve the availability of equity and debt capital through information sharing.

A survey was conducted in manufacturing industry in China and 208 valid questionnaires were used to test all the hypotheses. The data were then analyzed by employing partial least squares path modeling.

The results suggest that both strong tie and bridging tie of SMEs can lead to a positive effect on information sharing in supply chain, which can further enhance the credit quality for SMEs. However, without information sharing, the strong tie has not significant influence on SMEs’ credit quality, while bridging tie can directly impact on credit quality.

Despite their crucial role in sustaining national economies, SMEs are beset by the critical constraint of risk-free financing. Based on a survey, this research finds that the credit quality of SMEs is affected by two important factors: one concerns information sharing in supply chain and the other relates to the attributes of SMEs’ supply chain network. This study implies that a SME may have a financing advantage for better embedding in the supply chain network, but different effects will be experienced according to constraints associated with information asymmetry in the supply chain.

To extend family business research, this article proposes and tests a curvilinear relationship between social ties and family firm innovation, with the firm's market orientation and transgenerational intent as moderators.

Representatives from a sample of 150 family firms in the United Arab Emirates completed self-administered questionnaires. Regression analyses on the collected data test the conceptual model and proposed hypotheses.

The empirical study reveals an inverted U-shaped relationship, such that a high market orientation mitigates the diminishing returns of social ties on enhancing family firm innovation. Similarly, at high levels of transgenerational intent, family firm innovation increases due to social ties, instead of exhibiting diminishing returns.

These results help explain contradictory outcomes previously attributed to social ties and offer clear guidelines for how family firms can leverage these ties more effectively to enhance their own innovation.

This chapter addresses ambidexterity at the individual level. Ambidexterity is defined as a company's ability to guarantee both short- and long-term successes by simultaneously exploring new market or new technological paths and improving existing products. We demonstrate that this ability can result from the evolution of social networks linking individuals involved in idea development. We used a longitudinal approach that combined case study and social network structure analysis of the R&D center of a semiconductor company. Six cases have been selected according to the level of disruption of the first idea generated and the end result in terms of exploration and exploitation. For these six cases, data have been gathered from monthly project reviews, press articles and listings of patents. Seventy-four interviews with key actors in the idea-development process have also been conducted.We mapped the relationships between actors who have contributed to the development of the idea through creative thinking and/or helped it to be accepted both internally and externally over three-year windows. Consequently, two network pictures are drawn for each case, and network structure indicators are computed for these two representations. We created a description of network evolution and the consequences of this process on the level of disruption of the ideas involved. This research demonstrated that different network structures and types of connections are relied upon depending on the explorative or exploitative objectives of teams of individuals.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the type of ownership and control moderates the effect of the board social capital on the implied cost of capital. To do so, the authors analyzed the effect of the board social capital by the relational resources present in its direct and heterogenous ties, considering the predictions of analysts about the implied cost of capital.

The data panel comprised 137 companies listed on the Brazilian stock exchange between the years of 2002 and 2015, generating a total of 535 observations. The authors check the robustness of the results through instrumental variables and systems of equations, as well as compete for the effect of board social capital both by the board and ownership structures.

Results show that the board relational resources, both in direct and heterogeneous ties, significantly reduce the implied cost of capital for private companies, but not for state-owned companies. Board social capital reduces the cost of capital even when the results compete with the board structure and concentration of ownership, being able to mitigate the discount in the cost of capital by the presence of dominant shareholders.

This study uses a more theoretically and empirically comprehensive measure of board social capital than the majority of studies that use only network position indicators. So, contrasting the effect of this measure on the implied cost of capital between private and state-owned companies, the authors also demonstrate that the board social capital can mitigate the discount by ownership concentration on the implied cost of capital.

The aim of this article is to examine how office designs influence social capital or the value inherent in relationships. More specifically, this article attempts to better understand the level to which the value of social capital accrues, either to the individual or to the group.

The authors review theoretical and empirical research on the physical work environment and social capital to develop propositions that relate the effects of open office environments on the development of group‐ and individual‐level social capital.

It is argued that an open‐office environment, defined as an office design that attempts to maximize functional communication among organization members by removing physical barriers that hinder the flow of work and communications, can positively affect the development of social capital within an organization. Specifically, it is suggested that open office designs will foster the development of group‐level social capital (i.e. social capital that benefits the group, the result of network closure) but reduce individual‐level social capital (i.e. social capital that benefits individuals who connect otherwise unconnected groups in the network, or structural holes).

By effectively managing the physical work environment, organizations can better control and/or influence the frequency and nature of interactions between employees, which may result in desirable outcomes for both the organization and employees.

The article integrates two streams of literature – social capital and physical work environment – and will be of interest to researchers in both literature groups. In addition, office managers and designers can benefit from the discussion in an effort to foster group level social capital.

There is a lack of studies investigating the role of the structural configuration of social capital – more specifically, structural holes – for employees' individual learning. The objective of this paper is to address this gap in the literature, ultimately enhancing understanding of the link between the structural configuration of social capital and individual learning.

An online questionnaire survey was administered to employees affiliated to 22 pharmacies in Sweden to gather attributional and relational data on the individual level. Social network analysis techniques were used to describe salient structural characteristics of individuals' social capital. The impact of social capital on individual learning was explored through ordinal logistic regression models based on maximum likelihood estimations.

The presence of structural holes initially increases the degree of individual learning, then reaches a maximum and begins to gradually decrease.

The results of the study provide valuable input for the development and management of networks within firms, in order to improve learning and innovation. In addition, given the close proximity between learning, as conceptualized in this study, and other job attitudes, human resource management practices in general could benefit greatly from the results.

In this paper, the authors focus on the structural configuration of social capital, more specifically structural holes, and its inter‐relationship with learning. Although prior literature has analyzed various beneficial effects of social capital, this study is the first of its kind to investigate the role of the structural configuration of the social capital for employees' individual learning.

Significant resources of time, money and expertise are invested in leadership development programs, and networking is often cited as a benefit of participation in these programs. Previous research has traditionally focused on leadership as an individual attribute, but researchers and practitioners are increasingly recognizing leadership as a social process. Social capital has emerged as an important theme in leadership research, and networking and relationship-building are important steps in enhancing social capital. Based on this review of recent literature, I conclude that the relationship between social capital and leadership is well documented, but we have an incomplete understanding of the dynamic nature of this relationship, and lack sufficient evidence to support a causal assertion that one leads to the other. Researchers and practitioners should develop new leadership development program evaluation methods and designs, in the context of social capital, to answer these questions.