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This study analyses the link between product/service innovation, partnerships and Managerial Control System (MCS). Particularly, it aims to analyse empirically the role of MCS in supporting the innovation partnership successful functioning and management.

The sample of this study consists of 106 Italian manufacturing firms belonging to the sectors of the Italian economy with the largest number of registered patents according to the European trend chart on innovation.

The results show that MCS may play a key role in reducing risks and lowering the likelihood of failure of innovation partnerships. Particularly, the authors found a positive correlation between the use of informal control mechanisms and a partnership’s successful performance. Moreover, among informal control, the findings show that trust is the only true informal mechanism that can guarantee a successful collaboration. The results of this study may offer relevant implications for practitioners. With regard to the control of the partnership’s activities, the initiatives and creativity of those who are actively involved in the innovation process should not be inhibited; therefore, stifling them with strict rules and procedures would be ineffective but if a firm is not willing to give up formal control mechanisms altogether because it does not believe that a trust-based coordination is sufficiently reassuring, it should opt for “weak”, albeit formal, control mechanisms based on a shared production and management of plans and reports, thus ensuring a perfect information symmetry among different partners.

Notwithstanding the different opportunities provided by partnerships and strategic alliances to support there is a growing body of evidence of a high failure rate in such organisational forms. One of the causes cited in the literature is the high level of risk associated with alliances as compared to internal development of innovation. The risks mainly arise from the difficulties to obtain cooperation with partners that might have different objectives, and from the potential opportunistic behaviour of some of the partners. This is particularly true in innovation networks where the uncertainty of producing an interesting result is very high and the investments that the partners make are considerable. In this context, MCS could play a relevant role in reducing the risks and decreasing the likelihood of failure.

Research on the effects of feedback frequency has reported mixed findings. To tackle this problem, the current study focuses on specific feedback signs (i.e. negative feedback). By integrating the face management theory and attribution theory, this study examined the mediating effect of trust in supervisors and the moderating effect of employee-attributed performance promotion motives for negative feedback.

A field study with 176 participants and two supplemental experiments with 143 and 100 participants, respectively, were conducted to test the theoretical model.

Results revealed that the frequency of supervisory negative feedback negatively influenced employees’ trust in supervisors, which in turn influenced employees’ perceptions of feedback utility and learning performance. These indirect effects can be alleviated when employees have high degrees of performance promotion attribution for supervisor motives.

This research extends feedback research by integrating feedback frequency with a specific sign of feedback and revealing a moderated mediation effect of the negative feedback frequency.

As buyers and suppliers seek to create value, they face the challenge of creating an environment that promotes coordination and information sharing and discourages opportunism. While the literature suggested dyadic mechanisms to create such an environment, this study focuses on ties beyond the buyer–supplier dyad. Specifically, close connections to one's partner's partners (CPP) are crucial in the realization of benefits for buyers and suppliers.

Drawing from embeddedness theory and governance theory, the authors developed a contingency framework to examine when CPP are beneficial or counterproductive considering two dyadic attributes – relational capital (RC) and partner dependence. Analyses were conducted using data from a dyadic survey complemented with archival data on 106 buyer–supplier relationships (BSRs).

The study reveals that CPP both help and hurt in the realization of benefits. Stark asymmetries exist between the impact of CPP on the buyer and supplier sides. For buyers, CPP exert a direct positive effect on operational and innovation benefits. For suppliers, the effect of CPP on operational and innovation benefits is contingent on buyer dependence and RC – CPP serves as a substitute for buyer dependence and RC. There are no such contingency effects for buyers. Further analysis identifies situations for suppliers when CPP hurt the realization of benefits.

The study highlights the importance of CPP to foster efficiency and innovation within BSRs and illustrates how their impact varies across contingency conditions and across the parties within a dyad.

This study aims to investigate how and to what extent structural network properties affect dyadic negotiation behavior in tourism destination ecosystems. Specifically, this study addresses negotiation behavior in terms of problem-solving and contending, because these two key strategies reflect the integrative and distributive aspects of dyadic interactions.

This study relies on network data and dyadic survey data from nine mountain tourism destinations in Southeastern Norway. The structural network properties the authors research are triadic closure – the extent to which a dyad has common ties to other actors – and structural equivalence – the similarities in networking patterns that capture firms’ competition for similar resources. In addition, the authors also study a possible effect of relationship duration on negotiation behavior.

Triadic closure and relationship duration have positive effects on problem-solving, and structural equivalence tends to decrease problem-solving, although the effect is inconsistent; none of these three independent variables was found to affect contending negotiation behavior.

This study shows that a dyad’s structural network embeddedness has implications for negotiation behavior. Further research is encouraged to develop this theoretical perspective.

This study is a pioneering investigation of how structural network properties affect dyadic negotiation behavior in ongoing coproducing relationships in real-world destination ecosystems.

This study aims to understand what primary relationship problem mechanisms can exist in the franchise channel and how exchange partners respond to them. This study demonstrates how the franchisor’s relationship problem mechanisms (threat, contract enforcement) affect the franchisee’s negative active responses (venting, threatened withdrawal).

This study tested hypotheses through multiple regression analysis using data from 200 franchisees in Korea-based food franchise systems.

The results indicated that threat increases venting and threatened withdrawal, while contract enforcement only increases venting. Venting increases threatened withdrawal. In addition, the results indicated that the franchisor’s behavior monitoring positively moderates the relationship between relationship problem mechanisms and negative active responses.

This study helps strategically manage responses to relationship problems by categorizing ‘relationship problem mechanisms’ into intentional relationship problem mechanisms based on communication (threat) and unintentional relationship problem mechanisms based on action (contract enforcement). This study finds that both relationship problem mechanisms, intentional or unintentional, eventually cause threatened withdrawal directly or indirectly. Even if the threat is merely communication, not action, it is more likely to cause relationship dissolution than contract enforcement by directly triggering any negative active response. This study also finds that behavior monitoring can affect exchange partners through interaction with other management mechanisms rather than directly affecting them.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of knowledge transfer between employees and coworkers. That is, when and why employees engage in knowledge seeking or knowledge sabotage when confronted with coworkers with higher relative overqualification.

This study collected survey data from 315 employee-coworker pairs in East China at three-time points.

The results showed that when the cooperative goal interdependence between employee and coworker is high, the perception of coworker’s relative overqualification will cause benign envy of employees, which in turn promote employees to engage in knowledge seeking from coworker. However, when the competitive goal interdependence between employee and coworker is high, the perception of coworker’s relative overqualification will cause malicious envy of employees, which in turn promote employees to engage in knowledge sabotage toward coworker.

This research not only expands the theoretical perspective and outcomes of relative overqualification but also enriches the mechanism of knowledge seeking and knowledge sabotage. Meanwhile, this study also provides practical guidance for enterprises to reduce knowledge sabotage.

This study aims to further the understanding of multi-level analysis in inter-organisational relationships by investigating the interplay of governance, cooperation and coordination in inter-organisational projects (IOPs) on sub-system and project levels.

The authors use the Viable Systems Model as a framework to analyse inter-organisational project governance, cooperation and coordination by adopting a multiple-case study.

The findings illustrate how governance and coordination mechanisms exhibit a filter-down effect on lower sub-systems while cooperation influence is confined within each sub-system. While remarking the importance of specific sub-systems on the overall project performance, the interplay of governance, cooperation and coordination across sub-systems appears to be complex, with governance influencing cooperation and coordination, whereas cooperation and coordination influence each other with an incremental effect.

This study defines two propositions that explain how multiple levels of analysis (project and sub-systems) can support the governance of large inter-organisational projects. The authors elaborate theory on the interplay of inter-organisational project governance, cooperation and coordination.

Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), driven by the downstream buyers' power, transfers sustainability responsibilities to the upstream supplier. In contrast to the heavily-focused buyers' perspective in the literature, the authors investigate how this buyer-driven SSCM influences suppliers' performance, using the measure of stock market reaction.

Grounded by the resource dependence theory (RDT), the authors empirically analyze the power effect on suppliers. Event study methodology and regression analysis are used, based on a sample of 1977 paired supplier observations from 1990 to 2016.

The result suggests that although a negative stock market reaction for suppliers in SSCM exists, the effect is less negative at a high level of buyer and supplier dependence. For the investigation of the “consolidated SSCM initiative,” where buyers acquire exogenous power by collaboratively managing SSCM with their peers, the authors uncover that the negative impact of this consolidated SSCM initiative can be mitigated by the high interdependence that generates relational norms in the dyads.

The authors focus on dyadic relationships. Future research can use the study's findings to study the SSCM diffusion to lower-tier suppliers.

This paper has good managerial implications for both suppliers and buyers. The authors propose dependence-based strategies for supplier managers to reduce uncertainty in SSCM. Moreover, buyer managers can use the study's findings to strengthen suppliers' commitment.

The novelty of examining the suppliers' perspective contributes to exploring the supply chain impact of SSCM. The authors extend RDT and show that high dependence is not necessarily detrimental to suppliers in this buyer-driven SSCM context. The interesting finding of interdependence in the context of the consolidated SSCM initiative brings new insights that relational norms constrain the leverage of power in the dyads and are beneficial to the power-disadvantageous suppliers.

To this date, research on tensions has been carried out on business networks and value co-creation, with no studies exploring tensions within the marketing services context. This study aims to use the three tension categories proposed by Toth et al. (2018) and Pressey and Vanharanta (2006) to address this gap by identifying the tensions experienced in the market research agency (MRA), creative agency (CA) and client relationship, as well as the processes that increase or minimize these tensions.

A total of 25 in-depth interviews were carried out with MRA, CA and client employees. NVivo 12 was used to conduct a thematic analysis to identify the overarching processes that influenced tensions.

Six second-order codes were identified, designating processes that exacerbated or minimized each of the three tensions experienced. Two new processes were identified (“adopting governance processes” and “aspects of identity formation”) which have not been previously reported. An empirical framework was developed pinpointing processes that influenced each tension category, also highlighting complex interdependencies between behavioral, emotional and structural tensions.

This study presents the perspectives of all actors within the marketing services triad providing a more nuanced understanding of tensions at the triadic level, as previous literature predominantly focused either on dyads or on networks. Furthermore, this study highlights important interdependencies between tension categories, providing novel contributions, as well as directions for future research.

This study focuses on the triadic multilevel psychic distance (MPD) between the firm, target market and bridge-maker and its consequences for firm internationalization. Specifically, it spotlights the triadic psychic distance between firms, the levels of psychic distance in the target market (country and business) and the bridge-maker. Therefore, this study examines the triadic MPD among these three entities and its impact on firm internationalization.

This study uses qualitative and case study research approaches. It is based on 8 case companies and 24 internationalization cases. Secondary data were collected, and interviews with bridge-makers and industry experts were conducted.

The study found that MPD appeared in the triad. The MPD between firms and markets is related to country-specific differences and business difficulties. The MPD between the firm and the bridge-maker is based on the latter’s lack of knowledge vis-à-vis bridging the firm’s MPD. Finally, the MPD between bridge-makers and the market is based on the former’s lack of knowledge of the home country’s business difficulties.

This is the first study to develop and adopt a triadic multilevel psychic distance conceptualization that provides evidence for and sheds light on the triadic MPD and its effect on firm internationalization. This study identifies the reasons behind triadic MPD in connection to firm internationalization. Notably, firm internationalization is interdependent on the triadic MPD setting between the firm, bridge-maker and target market. It has theoretical value and contributes to the recent advancement in the understanding of MPD in international marketing literature.