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Future is rarely explicitly addressed or problematized in business network research. This study aims to examine the possibilities of developing a business actor’s future orientation to network studies and imports ideas and concepts from futures research to support the development.

The study is conceptual and interdisciplinary. The authors critically analyze how extant studies grounded in the sensemaking view and process research approach integrate future time and how theoretical myopia hinders the adoption of a future orientation.

The prevailing future perspective is restricted to managers’ perceptions and actions at present, ignoring the anticipation and exploration of alternative longer-term futures. Future time is generally conceived as embedded in managers’ cognitive processes or is seen as part of the ongoing interaction, where the time horizon to the future is not noticed or is at best short.

To enable a forward-looking perspective, researchers should move the focus from expectation building in business interaction to purposeful preparation of alternative future(s) and from the view of seeing future as enacted in the present to envisioning of both near-term and more distant futures.

This study addresses the growing need of business actors to anticipate future developments in the rapidly changing market conditions and to innovate and change business practices to save the planet for future generations.

This study elaborates on actors’ future orientation to business markets and networks, proposes the integration of network research concepts with concepts from futures studies and poses new types of research questions for future research.

In this paper, I explore what shapes the identities of digital nomads (DNs), a class of remote workers who travel and work concurrently. Through extensive fieldwork and interviews with 50 digital nomads conducted in seven coworking hostels in Mexico in 2022, I construct a theory of DN identity. I base this upon the frequent transformations they undergo in their Circumstances, which regularly change their worker identity.

DNs relinquish traditional social determinants of identity, such as nationality and religion. They define their personal identities by their passions and interests, which are influenced by the people they meet. DNs exist in inherently transitive social spaces and, without rigid social roles to fulfil, they represent themselves authentically. They form close relationships with other long-term travellers to combat loneliness and homesickness. Digital nomads define their worker identities around their location independence. This study shows that DNs value their nomadic lifestyle above promotions and financial gain. They define themselves by productivity and professionalism to ensure the sustainability of their lifestyle. Furthermore, digital nomad coworking hubs serve focused, individual work, leaving workplace politics and strict ‘office image’ norms behind. Without fixed social and professional roles to play, digital nomads define themselves personally according to their ever-evolving passions and the sustainability of their nomadic life. Based on these findings, I present a cyclical framework for DN identity evolution which demonstrates how relational, logistical, and socio-personal flux evolves DN’s worker identities.

This study aims to explore the relationship between network position and innovation under major environmental turbulence.

The authors use a difference-in-differences identification approach using the 2009 Industry Revitalization Plan in response to the global financial crisis as a natural experiment with a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2001 to 2017.

The findings show that a major environmental turbulence can facilitate firm innovation, and firms that occupy central positions in the interlock network show worse innovation performance while firms with high brokerage show better innovation performance.

The literature on environmental implication has largely focused on the threats and overlooked the potential opportunities. Moreover, social network literature has elaborated on the benefits and constraints of network positions from a static perspective but largely overlooked their implications facing environmental change. By exploring the bright side of major environmental turbulence and including this factor as a key contingency in exploring the effects of centrality and brokerage, this study integrates external environmental context with social network research and provides empirical evidence responding to the call for more attention to network dynamics and extends our understanding of the context-contingent network effects on firm innovation.

This study aims to investigate how companies’ understanding of the business network influences the creation of value in business-to-business relationships. The authors do this by analysing dimensions in actors’ “network pictures” and illustrating how value perception and network understanding influence actors’ mutual effort to create value. Approaching relationship value from the point of actors’ cognitive understanding of their business network has so far been largely overlooked in relationship value research.

This study applies a qualitative case study methodology whereby dyadic data from a well-established business-to-business relationship is collected from 18 company representatives through personal interviews and group interviews supplemented by participant observations and company data.

The findings contribute with new insight into how companies’ understanding of their surrounding network influence (facilitates or limits) relationship value creation. The authors find that companies continuously reflect on changes in their networks and the related changes in partners’ value perceptions. Through value articulations, companies seek to explicitly express their value perception. Value reflections and value articulations create a dynamic process formed not only by the individual actor but also through their relationship and engagement in their network environment. This requires companies to develop their networking capabilities.

This paper presents findings, insights and contributions limited to a case study of a particular business relationship within an industrial setting. Although the findings and contributions are valid and in line with the criteria for rigorous qualitative research, the authors advocate and call for additional studies that investigate relationships value creation and address the interplay between actors’ network understanding and their actions and behaviour. One way to approach this would be to test the four propositions derived and presented as part of the present study.

The findings imply that management needs to be aware not only of the value created and delivered to a specific partner but also of how the partner’s understanding of the wider network will influence the value delivering and capturing process.

This study contributes to the growing literature on relationship value creation by outlining a dynamic process where relationship partners reflect upon and articulate value. Such activities are influenced by the partners’ network understanding and form the basis of the mutual relationship value creation effort. The findings also contribute to the network pictures literature by emphasizing insights into the formation of value perceptions through actors’ understanding of their surrounding networks.

Previous research has analyzed the consequence of network stability; however, little is known about how partner type diversity influence network stability in R&D network. Based on knowledge-based view and social network theory, the purpose of this paper is to unravel the internal mechanisms between partner type diversity and network stability through the mediating role of knowledge recombination in R&D network.

The authors collected an unbalanced panel patent data set from information communication technology industry for the period 1994–2016. Then, the authors tested the different dimensions of partner type variety and its relevance in the R&D network and the mediating role of knowledge recombination through adopting the multiple linear regression.

Results indicate an inverted U-shaped relationship between partner type diversity (variety and relevance) and network stability, whereas knowledge recombination partially mediate these relationships.

From the perspective of R&D networks, this paper explores that there are the under-researched phenomena the antecedent of network stability through nodal attributes (i.e. partner type variety and partner type relevance). Moreover, this paper empirically examined the mediating role of knowledge recombination in the partner type diversity–network stability relationships. The novel perspective allows focal firm to recognize importance of nodal attributes, which are critical to fully excavate the potential capabilities of cooperating partners in R&D network.

The research on social media-based academic communication has made great progress with the development of the mobile Internet era, and while a large number of research results have emerged, clarifying the topology of the knowledge label network (KLN) in this field and showing the development of its knowledge labels and related concepts is one of the issues that must be faced. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.

From a bibliometric perspective, 5,217 research papers in this field from CNKI from 2011 to 2021 are selected, and the title and abstract of each paper are subjected to subword processing and topic model analysis, and the extended labels are obtained by taking the merged set with the original keywords, so as to construct a conceptually expanded KLN. At the same time, appropriate time window slicing is performed to observe the temporal evolution of the network topology. Specifically, the basic network topological parameters and the complex modal structure are analyzed empirically to explore the evolution pattern and inner mechanism of the KLN in this domain. In addition, the ARIMA time series prediction model is used to further predict and compare the changing trend of network structure among different disciplines, so as to compare the differences among different disciplines.

The results show that the degree sequence distribution of the KLN is power-law distributed during the growth process, and it performs better in the mature stage of network development, and the network shows more stable scale-free characteristics. At the same time, the network has the characteristics of “short path and high clustering” throughout the time series, which is a typical small-world network. The KLN consists of a small number of hub nodes occupying the core position of the network, while a large number of label nodes are distributed at the periphery of the network and formed around these hub nodes, and its knowledge expansion pattern has a certain retrospective nature. More knowledge label nodes expand from the center to the periphery and have a gradual and stable trend. In addition, there are certain differences between different disciplines, and the research direction or topic of library and information science (LIS) is more refined and deeper than that of journalism and media and computer science. The LIS discipline has shown better development momentum in this field.

KLN is constructed by using extended labels and empirically analyzed by using network frontier conceptual motifs, which reflects the innovation of the study to a certain extent. In future research, the influence of larger-scale network motifs on the structural features and evolutionary mechanisms of KLNs will be further explored.

This study aims to explore how a start-up entering maritime logistics networks (MLNs) in the container shipping industry integrates resources underlying value cocreation patterns in these networks.

The paper is based on a single case study of a technological start-up, providing tracking, tracing and other information services to MLN members using internet-based software. An interorganizational theory perspective informs the case study to unveil the resource integration for value cocreation in the network.

The start-up holds multiple resource interaction roles and the start-up’s involvement enables the creation of new knowledge resources, which facilitate new revenue streams and manage resource dependencies. Hence, the findings indicate that the start-up changes value cocreation patterns in the network by reconfiguring and integrating existing resources so that the service is customized for various customers, including shippers and freight forwarders.

The results provide insights about how technological start-ups can unlock resources within MLNs.

The study extends previous studies on resource roles in business networks and shows how start-ups can perform multiple roles simultaneously within these networks. In addition, the study contributes to the literature by studying information and knowledge as resources configured in different ways in a unique network setting.

Considering the frequency of extreme events, enhancing the global financial system's stability has become crucial. This study aims to investigate the contagion effects of extreme risk events in the international commodity market on China's financial industry. It highlights the significance of comprehending the origins, severity and potential impacts of extreme risks within China's financial market.

This study uses the tail-event driven network risk (TENET) model to construct a tail risk spillover network between China's financial market and the international commodity market. Combining with the characteristics of the network, this study employs an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to examine the factors influencing systemic risks in China's financial market and to explore the early identification of indicators for systemic risks in China's financial market.

The research reveals a strong tail risk contagion effect between China's financial market and the international commodity market, with a more pronounced impact from the latter to the former. Industrial raw materials, food, metals, oils, livestock and textiles notably influence China's currency market. The systemic risk in China's financial market is driven by systemic risks in the international commodity market and network centrality and can be accurately predicted with the ARDL-error correction model (ECM) model. Based on these, Chinese regulatory authorities can establish a monitoring and early warning mechanism to promptly identify contagion signs, issue timely warnings and adjust regulatory measures.

This study provides new insights into predicting systemic risk in China's financial market by revealing the tail risk spillover network structure between China's financial and international commodity markets.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of acquisition and organic growth on the operating efficiency and total factor productivity change of retailing networks.

The assessment uses low-frequency data of newly opened stores and acquired stores of a large supermarket (S/M) network in Athens, for a period (financial year 2014) where the network began to refocus on its organic growth after a two-year period of deep recession (financial years 2012–2013). To evaluate the performance effects of both strategies, the authors employ the innovative benchmarking tool of bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) for measuring operational efficiency and the Malmquist productivity index DEA approach for measuring productivity change over time.

The short-run evidence indicates that compared to organic growth, acquisitions lead to lower operating efficiency. However, this difference gradually converges over time as acquired stores show a higher rate of productivity compared to newly opened stores. The authors interpret this as a result of the smooth integration of the acquired chain store into the organizational structure of the existing store network given their significant similarities in terms of products and customers.

The authors inform managers of store chains that during the process of organic growth, a general improvement in efficiency takes place while in the case of acquisitions, the required post-acquisition streamlining actions cause a short delay on the realization of efficiency gains. Therefore, managers should not take it for granted that acquisitions cause a long-term decrease in efficiency.

The study contributes to the literature on growth strategies and retailing performance in general, by offering new evidence regarding the comparative effect of the horizontal growth modes on the efficiency of store chains.

This study aims at unpacking the multiplicity of the sitting activity in public spaces through the lens of actor-network theory. In line with previous urban research focussing on outdoor activities, such empirical investigation aims to show the importance of the physical aspects of spaces, including seating, in supporting sitting activities as a way of encouraging the use of public space.

This study adopts the overlap between actor–network theory and affordances. It utilises ethnographic research involving frequent users in Dahiyat Al Hussein Park in Amman-Jordan. Data were gathered on the different seat–user relations and the translated sitting activity networks.

Analysis demonstrates different cases of alignment, misalignment and realignment between what is intended and experienced, and where these relations are maintained, disrupted or changed. These findings reveal the multiplicity of sitting activities; this is significant for understanding how they are maintained.

The research suggests a new way of conceptualising the relationship between the physical environment and users and an approach for examining sitting activities. Some studies have applied actor–network theory and/or the concept of “affordance” by highlighting relations between the object and its user and how they create sitting activities. However, only few studies have problematised the multiplicity of sitting when considering seating uses.