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This paper aims to understand how organizational and interpersonal relationships influence selling centers, and how to form an effective selling center to establish cooperation among the functional departments to satisfy customer needs.

The selling center and social capital literatures are reviewed. A social network perspective is employed to explore the internal and external relationships of corporate selling centers.

Building upon social capital literature and team literature, the authors propose that selling center performance is influenced by its internal and external social capital. Social capital influences selling center performance through facilitating knowledge transfer and absorption within and across the selling center.

The findings help sales managers diagnose the problems of the social networks among their selling center members, to improve their selling center performance in the future.

The paper investigates the relationships among social capital, knowledge transfer and absorption and team performance in the selling center context. By considering both intra‐firm relationships and inter‐firm relationships, this study provides a relatively complete picture of selling center performance and adds knowledge to the field.

Increasing pressure to reduce costs and skepticism of promised value‐added are forcing suppliers to produce tangible proof of the monetary value they create for customers. The academic literature on the practical activities related to value‐based selling remains sparse. This paper aims to bridge the gap between the abundant theoretical customer value frameworks and implementation practices to create a practical foundation for value‐based sales activities in firms that aim to become value creators.

Based on two case studies, the authors map the best practices in customer value quantification from the point of view of industrial customers, and study value‐based sales processes to uncover the value‐based sales activities for implementing and profiting from customer value.

The results suggest a customer‐focused sales process that centers on creating value, quantifying the value created, and creating a situation where customer and supplier maximize their utility through value sharing.

The generalizability of the findings is limited to the industrial and service selling context.

Successful industrial and service requires tangible proof and evidence of the value and utility of the suppliers' business impact on the customer's operation. The paper aims to contribute to the value quantification knowledge and practices.

The academic literature on the practical activities related to value‐based selling remains sparse, while the importance of the value quantification knowledge and value selling process is growing rapidly.

The purpose of this paper is to test the market‐based asset framework by examining the role of marketing process improvements in the relationship between a buyer firm's supplier‐related activities and its performance.

Interviews with executives who were involved in supplier development were conducted to learn more about supplier development and to help in the development of the survey constructs. A self‐report survey was then developed online to collect data for the study. In total, 338 executives responded and partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses developed in the study.

Marketing process improvements were found to mediate the relationship between a firm's supplier development efforts and firm performance, thus providing empirical support for the market‐based asset framework. The study also found that a firm's supplier development activities can lead to improvements in its marketing processes.

For too long, a firm's supply chain has been seen as the primary domain of the supply chain and operations department, even though supply chain decisions and errors have a considerable impact on the ability of marketing professionals to perform. The findings in this study demonstrate the value of the relationship between a firm's supply chain and its marketing activities and as such makes the case for marketing executives to be more involved in supply chain activities.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the expanding role of trust in the knowledge economy. Specifically it aims to focus on the unique nature of the knowledge economy and the importance of informal and social control provided by the development of trust.

The paper is conceptual and a literature review.

The intra‐ and inter‐organizational dynamics of the knowledge economy require a unique focus on the development and maintenance of trust. Marketing relationships within and across firms will change and require a renewed emphasis on trust to safeguard the key asset in the knowledge economy, knowledge.

This article adds new insights on organizational trust, specifically under the paradigm of knowledge‐based production systems that characterize a knowledge economy.

The purpose of this article is to develop and propose a comprehensive framework that identifies the factors that influence a company’s decision to adopt business to business (B2B) technologies.

The authors review the literature regarding technology adoption from multiple disciplines including: Supply Chain Management, Logistics, Sociology, Information Systems, Marketing and Economics. A synthesis of the review provides the foundation for developing a comprehensive model of inter-firm technology adoption.

The review and synthesis finds inconsistencies in the theoretical models and constructs used in previous studies of inter-firm technology adoption. The comprehensive framework presented identifies four major categories of antecedents to technology adoption: characteristics of a technology, organizational factors, external factors and relationships. The presented model focuses attention on the inclusion of relational factors that affect the adoption of B2B technology.

An important area that has been ignored in the inter-firm adoption literature is the impact of inter-firm relationships on technology adoption. This paper emphasizes the importance of inter-firm relationships and identifies power, trust and justice as important relationships that influence the adoption of inter-firm technologies.

The expanded framework identifies the antecedents of B2B technology adoption, which can be used as a guiding framework by both academics and practitioners. The paper also offers directions for future work in the form of propositions.

Information and communication technology (ICT) is a key enabler for new product‐ and process‐oriented services. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how ICT can enable service differentiation and, in doing so, act as a catalyst for a service business orientation.

The paper is based on a qualitative, multi‐case research design with eight multinational goods manufacturers.

The paper identifies two distinct types of service‐oriented differentiation: services in support of the product (SSP) and services in support of the client's actions (SSC). The study finds that SSC have the largest positive impact on firms' service business orientation.

Western firms in a limited sample of industries are studied. Furthermore, the service business orientation construct does not include any measurements of service profitability or impact on overall competitive advantage.

To various extents, successful firms are likely to pursue both SSP and SSC differentiation traits through ICT. The two options are interdependent and the framework presented helps managers to understand both key specificities and their interrelatedness.

The study contributes to theory on service strategies by specifically focusing on the enabling role of ICT for new services and its effects on each of the three dimensions of the service business orientation construct.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact that systematization of sales activities through sales process management has, at the firm level, on profitable sales growth in business‐to‐business (B2B) companies. The research aims to compare companies focusing on service offerings to those focusing on product offerings.

The study is based on survey data.

Despite the emergence of service‐dominant logic, B2B service and product companies still differ in how sales process management contributes to firm performance.

The findings suggest that differences between service and product firms in their sales process management stem from the different underlying modes of interaction. The findings are generalizable to B2B companies.

The findings help businesses differentiate between productive sales process management practices in product and service firms.

The study contributes to the wider need of operationalizing ideas about sales process management at the level of organizations and business units.

Offshore outsourcing offers competitive advantages when goods and services are produced economically and with acceptable or superior quality by suppliers located outside a firm's home country. The purpose of this paper is to focus on India as a destination for offshore outsourcing of services and the challenges it faces in maintaining its leadership in this area. The paper discusses the growth of services outsourcing and the economic and environmental forces that have contributed to the outsourcing of high‐end services, also known as knowledge process outsourcing (KPO).

This article surveys the literature of offshore outsourcing and identifies strategic drivers and options that can help India to grow and consolidate its position as an exporter of services and build long‐term competitive advantages in its relationships with global partners. To understand why nations gain competitive advantage in certain industries, Porter's “diamond” model is utilized as a broad framework for examining policies and national strategies that can sustain India's competitive advantage in outsourcing of knowledge‐based services. The paper discusses India's current and prospective assets and liabilities that correspond to the model's four components.

The article discusses India's competitive edge as a leading supplier of knowledge‐based services and proposes a model for sustaining this edge. The model proposes key policy steps to move from the current position (e.g. supplier of business process outsourcing services) to a role of knowledge leader by providing advanced value added services to global clients. This model suggests ways in which a supplier nation can gain leverage in the value chain.

The article is conceptual, not empirical. Public and corporate policy implications are presented to strengthen India's competitive advantages in outsourced services.

The article presents a strategic roadmap with policy implications that can help move India up the value chain from being primarily a destination for low‐end business process outsourcing (BPO) to that of a co‐equal, high value‐adding partner or principal who offers knowledge leadership in the design and delivery of services for global markets.

The article discusses a nation's technical strengths, as well as cultural and infrastructure weaknesses, that can contribute to volatility as a global outsourcing leader. The article also presents strategies that can reduce a nation's vulnerabilities to competitive actions.

The aim of this paper is to focus on the determinants that impact the growth of SMEs in B-to-B markets in emerging economies. The objective is to apply the classic model of organizational ecology to examine the characteristics of growth patterns in the B-to-B environment for SMEs in emerging markets, specifically India and China. Application of the model can guide SMEs owners/managers in their effort to successfully expand internationally in turbulent markets characterized by competitive and technological intensity.

An overview of the basics of the organizational ecology model is presented, followed by the description of various economic drivers of B-to-B markets in India and China. The integration of the organizational ecology model and the strategic development of methods to deal with specific challenges of entering international markets are discussed. The paper concludes with managerial implications and suggestions for future research.

Businesses operating in emerging markets face many of the same roadblocks concerning efficiencies, increasing competition, and the need for capital, that are experienced by businesses throughout the world, however, they also face challenges unique to the developmental nature of the country environment. Ecological models can be used to understand the dynamics between resource utilization and growth.

The ecology-based view evaluates the utilization of resources with a focus on how changes in resource availability impact the international growth strategy of the B-to-B firm in India and China. These two economies represent a large business environment, generally underdeveloped with regards to taking advantage of potential resource availability.

While the significant economic contribution of SMEs is well understood, their business practices in emerging economies have not been extensively studied, especially in the B-to-B arena. The goal here is to stimulate the development of new insights for managing the complex relationships between the B-to-B SMEs, organizational ecology, and the international environment in emerging markets. This study extends the literature concerning factors that impact business success in important emerging markets such as India and China.