Abstract
Theories on business networks provide poor understanding of situations where it is the network itself, although featuring high degrees of loyalty, reciprocity, efficiency and trust, that seems to hinder innovativeness; on the other side, theories on business networks have not systematically investigated the different possible motivations that drive different business actors towards specific business networks. This Chapter suggests that these two gaps in theory are correlated. In fact, the three field researches presented here confirm that different business networks attract and select different actors and are effective in pursuing different goals, and these differences may strongly influence the innovation performances of the organizations. In the qualitative worst-practice research presented here, three networks where sustainable innovation processes were to some extent hindered or damaged or overlooked by the network itself were chosen as exemplary cases. After comparing and contrasting the outcomes of the case studies, the extant management literature, the suggestions from the theory of fairness and cooperation developed in Chapter 3 and from the theory of innovation developed in Chapter 4, the different dimensions of Network Effectiveness, corresponding to different “Motivations to Business Networking”, are discussed and operationalized. Possible positive and negative influences of the different possible Motivations for Networking on the organization’s innovational success are hypothesized.
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Ricciardi, F. (2014). Motivations for Business Networking. In: Innovation Processes in Business Networks. Advances in Information Systems and Business Engineering. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-03439-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-03439-9_5
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