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This monograph seeks to summarise the key influences of a role‐based perspective on leadership when making decisions as to how organisational resources can best be deployed.

Application of new frameworks provides insight into the leadership roles executives can adopt when part of formal, informal and temporary groups within the organisation's senior management team and those parts of the organisation for which they are responsible. The methodology adopted is qualitative, focusing on application of previously developed frameworks.

Adoption of an appropriate leadership role, and the timely switch from one role to another as circumstances change, are found to facilitate improvement in the ability of executives to mobilise organisational resources, and in so doing effectively address those challenges with which the organisation is faced.

A one‐organisation intensive case study of a multinational engineering company engaged in the design, development and manufacture of rotating turbomachinery provides the platform for the research. The research intent is to validate two frameworks in a different organisation of a similar demographic profile to those in which the frameworks were developed. The frameworks will require validating in organisations of different demographic profiles.

The concepts advanced, and implications discussed, provide an insight into the role‐based nature of leadership. The practical steps individual executives can take to develop their ability to adopt different leadership roles are highlighted.

This monograph is an investigation into, and study of the contribution of theory that provides insight into, the process by which executives effectively mobilise organisational resources. This differs from the original contributions to theory, which focused on methodology, data gathering and validation in contrast with the current study that is focused on practical application.

Social networks provide the architecture to facilitate important socio-emotional and task related exchanges within groups. However, researchers have just begun to explore how relationships form in groups comprised of individuals who differ on one or more dimensions. This paper investigates the role of social categorization and social network theories on the formation of social networks within diverse groups. We suggest that each perspective offers an alternative, but incomplete, understanding of how relationships may arise in diverse groups. Specifically, we integrate these two perspectives to provide a more complete understanding of how different types of diversity impact tie formation and allow individuals in diverse groups to achieve their socio-emotional and task-related objectives.

Is social network analysis just measures and methods with no theory? We attempt to clarify some confusions, address some previous critiques and controversies surrounding the issues of structure, human agency, endogeneity, tie content, network change, and context, and add a few critiques of our own. We use these issues as an opportunity to discuss the fundamental characteristics of network theory and to provide our thoughts on opportunities for future research in social network analysis.

This paper aims to contribute to better understanding of where and how network concepts, theories and perspectives, organisational networks, and networking practices, are being studied and deployed in social enterprise research. This is done through a systematic review of social enterprise and networks literature in business and management journals. Key trends and developments in this literature, and gaps and limitations, are identified, culminating in discussion of what next for social enterprise and networks research. The papers in this special issue on “Social Enterprise and Networks” are introduced.

A systematic review was undertaken of social enterprise and networks literature in business and management journals. Journals sampled included all those in the Entrepreneurship and Small Business subject area of the Association of Business Schools (ABS) Academic Journal Guide 2018, the journals in the Financial Times 50 research ranking, and selected wider business and society, non-profit management and public administration journals.

Analysis of publishing patterns of social enterprise and networks research finds that such research is growing, and that varied network perspectives, concepts and theories are being deployed. Social enterprise and networks are also being studied globally, using different methodologies. Nevertheless, there remains scope for deeper theoretical engagement, and for a wider range of network theories to be used. More even geographic coverage is also needed, and further insights can be gained through use of alternative methodologies.

Discussions in this paper have implications for research through outlining systematically the state of current scholarship on social enterprise and networks. In so doing, insight is provided on what is known about social enterprise and networks. But also on what is not known and where further enquiry is needed. Direction is thus provided for future social enterprise and networks scholarship.

In this paper, how, and the extent to which, social enterprise and networks scholarship offers implications for practice and policy is considered.

This paper makes a valuable contribution to social enterprise scholarship. It outlines the state of current knowledge and research on social enterprise and networks, identifying where and how relationships between social enterprise and networks have been studied, whilst also providing insights for what next in future social enterprise and networks research.

This study aims to contribute to the early but fervent debate on blockchain and supply networks by proposing a novel theoretical perspective on blockchain adoption grounded on social capital theory. In particular, it seeks to answer the following question: what is the role of social capital in shaping the decision to adopt blockchain in supply networks?

Multiple case-studies, based on interviews performed with managers of eight firms, were used.

The social capital theory emerged as an additional but necessary lens to investigate blockchain implementation in supply networks. The intuitions proposed highlighted the importance of managers’ sensemaking for investigating technology adoption. Relational capital emerged as a necessary but not sufficient condition to adopt blockchain in supply networks. In addition, it is argued a relationship between competitive opportunities at the firm level and the idea to adopt the blockchain. The opportunity to act as “Tertius Gaudens” or as “Tertius Iungens” information brokers in supply networks should severely affect firms’ proneness toward the adoption of blockchain solutions.

This is one of the first studies in the literature investigating blockchain adoption in supply networks from a social capital perspective. It introduces new issues to the debate related to the role of blockchain in the supply chain by discussing the role of goal misalignment and competitive advantage, which emerged as crucial for shaping the decision to adopt blockchain in supply networks.

While strategy was traditionally perceived as exclusive, and limited to small groups within organizations, recently a shift toward greater openness through inclusion of a larger number and variety of actors is emerging. The purpose of this paper is to adopt a social network perspective to develop a theoretical framework on how this increased openness has a varying impact in the different phases of the strategy process.

The author suggests that the strategy process is shaped through social interactions between individuals. Specifically the author conceptualizes how introducing openness affects individuals’ structural and relational characteristics, which impact generating new strategic ideas (variation), and selecting (selection), and integrating them into the existing set of routines (retention).

The framework shows that benefits and costs of increased openness balance differently. While substantial benefits may be realized in the idea generation phase, costs may outweigh the benefits in the selection and retention phase.

Based on the framework, implications can be drawn on how openness should be introduced in the different phases of the strategy process. Specifically the author discusses appropriate open strategy tools based on social technologies, which organizations can use to benefit from openness in the different stages.

Open strategy is a newly emerging phenomenon, which seems to fundamentally change the strategist’s work. More open, inclusive ways of strategizing offer new benefits but also create costs in the strategy process. This paper deepens the theoretical understanding of the consequences of openness in the strategy process.

This paper aims to systematically find the main research differences and similarities between social media and social networks in marketing research using the bibliometric perspective and provides suggestions for firms to improve their marketing strategies effectively.

The methods of co-word analysis and network analysis have been used to analyze the two research fields of social media and social networks. Specifically, this study selects 2,424 articles from 27 marketing academic journals present in the database Web of Science, ranging from January 1, 1996 to August 8, 2020.

The results show that social networks and social media are both research hotspots within the discipline of marketing research. The different intimacy nodes of social networks are more complex than social media. Additionally, the research scope of social networks is broader than social media in marketing research as shown by the keyword co-occurrence analysis. The overlap between social media and social networks in marketing research is reflected in the strong focus on their mixed mutual effects.

This paper explores the differences and similarities between social networks and social media in marketing research from the bibliometric perspective and provides a developing trend of their research hotspots in social media and social networks marketing research by keyword co-occurrence analysis and cluster analysis. Additionally, this paper provides some suggestions for firms looking to improve the efficiency of their marketing strategies from social and economic perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the notion of thin crossing points from a social network perspective and to outline the concrete networking strategies that enable salespeople to foster mutually valuable resource exchange (i.e. to thin crossing points) across a selling ecosystem.

The authors integrate extant theoretical perspectives to advance a conceptual framework of sales-related networking across three key actors in a selling ecosystem: intraorganizational selling actors and actors in customers and external partner organizations.

Thin crossing points are defined as figurative transaction points at the boundary between organizations or organizational subunits at which actors engage in mutually valuable resource exchange in the process of value cocreation. To thin crossing points with key ecosystem actors, salespeople must adapt networking strategies considering the time and trust constraints inherent in a network relationship. Such constraints inform the most advantageous network centralities (degree, eigenvector and betweenness) and actions to impact key network properties (tie strength, contact diversity) that enable salespeople to efficiently develop social capital and thus to optimally thin crossing points across a selling ecosystem.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first social network-based exploration of salespeople’s role in thinning crossing points with key ecosystem actors. It advances a novel conceptual framework of sales-related networking strategies that foster social capital development and optimally thin crossing points across a selling ecosystem.

The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has long recognized the importance of interpersonal influence for employee and organizational effectiveness. HRM research and practice have focused primarily on individuals’ characteristics and behaviors as a means to understand “who” is influential in organizations, with substantially less attention paid to social networks. To reinvigorate a focus on network structures to explain interpersonal influence, the authors present a comprehensive account of how network structures enable and constrain influence within organizations. The authors begin by describing how power and status, two key determinants of individual influence in organizations, operate through different mechanisms, and delineate a range of network positions that yield power, reflect status, and/or capture realized influence. Then, the authors extend initial structural views of influence beyond the positions of individuals to consider how network structures within and between groups – capturing group social capital and/or shared leadership – enable and constrain groups’ ability to influence group members, other groups, and the broader organizational system. The authors also discuss how HRM may leverage these insights to facilitate interpersonal influence in ways that support individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.