Search results

This chapter explores the reconstruction of the illy’s coffee supply chain in Brazil. The original supply chain was disrupted by fluctuating prices and inefficiencies and renovated based on network relationships between the focal company and the coffee growers. It describes the peculiar experience of illycaffe (an international coffee roaster based in Italy) in building social capital into its supply chain and resulting in a more sustainable network.

The chapter summarizes the development of different types of social capital and applies the concepts to understand illy’s journey towards quality and supply chain sustainability. The research design is consistent with theory elaboration from a single case study.

The chapter applies social capital theory to food commodity supply chains. The evolution to a more reliable and sustainable supply chain for illy’s Arabica coffee in Brazil suggests that supply chain relationships are a crucial asset for the focal firm, the local communities, and society at large. Results also show that developing such relationships might lead to better product quality, supply chain sustainability, and improved supply base capabilities.

The findings of this chapter contribute to the definition of a relational governance model for global food commodity supply chains. From a research standpoint, the empirical setting allows analyses of antecedents and consequences of different social capital components in the food supply chain. In addition, the case may help executives understand how to leverage supply chain relationships and identify a path to product quality and supply chain sustainability.

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.

Building on relational inequality theory, this paper incorporates social capital as a device to trace the flow of resources through relationships originating within and beyond organizations. I draw on a survey of over 1,700 lawyers to evaluate key dynamics of social capital that shape earnings: bridging and bonding, reciprocity exchanges and sponsorship, and boundary maintenance. The findings show social capital lends a lift to law graduates through bridges to professional careers and sponsorship following job entry. Racial minorities, however, suffer a shortfall of personal networks to facilitate job searches, and once having secured jobs, minorities experience social closure practices by clients and colleagues that disadvantage them in their professional work. A sizeable earnings gap remains between racial minority and white lawyers after controlling for human and social capitals, social closure practices, and organizational context. This earnings gap is particularly large among racial minorities with more years of experience and those working in large law firms. The findings demonstrate the importance of identifying the interrelations that connect social network and organizational context to impact social inequality.

This chapter introduces the term “interpreneurship” to refer to entrepreneurship that occurs through inter-organizational alliances, which represent a salient vehicle for combining complementary resources and capabilities across firms in order to gain a competitive advantage. The interpreneurship concept implies the integration of internal (firm) and external (network) resources through alliance formation and management. The purpose of this research is to introduce social structure to the rational action paradigm by examining the complementarity of entrepreneurial and relational resources in achieving organizational goals in an alliance context. In this study, interpreneurial capability is operationalized as the combination of entrepreneurial resources (via an internal growth strategy) with relational resources (via an external growth strategy). These effects are assessed through the examination of three competing research models. The hypothesized interaction-only model tests the impact of complementarity of entrepreneurial and relational resources on firm-level performance for both partners to an alliance. A second model tests relational resources as a mediator of the relationship between entrepreneurial resources and the alliance partners’ performance. Finally, a third model assumes that the two resources have independent effects on the alliance partners’ performance. We find that the interaction-only model yields the strongest relationship to organizational performance, supporting the interpreneurial perspective we proffer in this chapter.

Intellectual capital is the set of all intangible assets, that is, invisible, non-monetary assets held by a library, which can be identified as separate assets. Intellectual capital has become the buzzword of a knowledge-based economy and is the ultimate source of competitive advantage. In this work, we review the literature to analyse the effect of intellectual capital utilisation in the overall library management, to identify and classify intellectual capital and to provide some guidelines for researchers and practitioners. A literature review for the intellectual capital in libraries is conducted, and a qualitative analysis is undertaken, which interrelates library management to intellectual capital is taking place. The review leads to identification and classification of intellectual capital as well as to a number of quite innovative and interesting issues for the interrelation of intellectual capital to the management of libraries. The issues studied include intellectual capital economic valuation methods, the effect of the locality (spatial factor) to intellectual capital utilisation and the analysis of co-opetition (cooperation and competition) for intellectual capital utilisation. This is one of only a few studies about the management of intellectual capital in libraries and information services (LIS)—an innovative and challenging area of research in library management.

Given the suggested importance of collaborative capital to team and organizational performance, it is important that we develop a better understanding of potential processes by which it is developed in organizations. This chapter represents an attempt to explore one such process by examining why and how individuals contribute to the creation and maintenance of collaborative capital in the organizations for which they work. Drawing on social exchange theory and the norm of reciprocity, it is argued that individuals’ perceived social exchange relationship quality with their coworkers will predict their contributions to collaborative capital. Results of a preliminary empirical examination supporting this prediction are shared and suggestions for future research are offered.

This chapter conceptually addresses outward internationalisation of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) from the emerging markets (EMs) by focussing on the role of prior contract manufacturing relationships with a developed market multinational enterprise (DMNE). The internationalisation of SMEs originating from EMs is a rather under-researched area and the role of prior contract manufacturing experience specifically has not been addressed in prior studies. Based on a literature review, the authors identified four capabilities developed by EM SMEs during their contract manufacturing relationships with DMNE(s) that potentially help in later outward internationalisation. The authors incorporate some insights from dynamic capabilities theory, and develop propositions addressing the role of relational capital, human capital, manufacturing productivity capabilities and product innovation capabilities in this specific context. Despite being conceptual in nature, this chapter is one of the first to explicitly highlight the role of these specific capabilities developed during contract manufacturing relationship for outward internationalisation, setting bases for future studies to further empirically investigate them in different contexts.

In this chapter we develop a conceptual model describing how global teams do more than accomplish discrete tasks, and create “spillover coordination” effects by influencing the amount of work-related direct contact among team members outside the task boundaries of the team. We theorize that spillover coordination is the result of relational and cognitive social capital developed through team interaction. We also propose that the design of the team and the context in which it operates influence the degree to which social capital develops.

We develop a conceptual model including propositions that can be tested empirically. We suggest avenues for future research.

Our model proposes that teams are a more powerful cross-border integration mechanism than originally thought in existing literature in international management and organizational behavior, since they affect social capital that can benefit the broader MNE beyond scope of the task and after the team disbands. Our approach suggests that MNE managers should be mindful of global team spillover effects and intentional in the way they design global teams if those benefits are to be achieved.

Most research on global teams, and teams in general, does not look past the task and time boundary of the team. We expand the view of team effectiveness to encompass those dimensions.