What Follows

Abstract

This edited book has exposed a wide range of contributions, from empirical to theoretical, addressing the issues surrounding Dispersed Manufacturing Networks. The contributions neither claim to be complete nor will be the final stage of development of theory, methods and tools for industrial networks that consist of more loosely connected entities; rather they show the continuous evolution from our views on manufacturing networks (for some explicit comments on how these views have changed, see Chapter 2 by Rob Dekkers and David Bennett). It must be noted that the necessity to look at organisations that are loosely connected dates back to works like that of Weick (1976); he states that the perspective of loosely connected entities incorporates a surprising number of disparate observations about organisations, suggests novel functions, creates stubborn problems for methodologists, and generates intriguing questions for scholars. However, this recognition has hardly resulted in approaches that describe these loosely connected entities as networks; most authors (like Dubois and Gadde [2002] for the construction industry) attribute features of loosely coupled entities to specific networks. Mayntz (1993) has, much like the position taken in Dekkers and van Luttervelt (2006, p. 4) and Dekkers et al. (2004, pp. 65, 71–73), recognised that networks of loosely connected entities might solve coordination problems of responsiveness, agility and variety. This book will conclude by briefly looking back at the contributions made related to these unique capabilities of Dispersed Manufacturing Networks and the challenges that further research needs to address for loosely coupled manufacturing networks (Section 12.1) and the implications the thinking and research has on practice (Section 12.2).