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Call for Papers

Industrial Marketing Management

Special issue on “Process thinking and methods in dynamic business networks”

Deadline for submission: November 15, 2016

Background

The Interactive Business Marketing approach posits that what an actor tries to accomplish both draws on and affects activities and resources of other actors (Håkansson & Snehota 1989). Often a stability-change lens is applied for analysing and discerning the linkages and elements between business actors: an existing network pre-exists change and hence stabilizes actors’ understanding of business processes. As a result critical transitions in business networks, such as entries and exits, and ongoing change are seen to occur by adaptations, which often pass unnoticed within business relationships (Håkansson & Ford 2002). In other words, stability of the network comes first, and change is overridden and often hidden inside the actors and the interactions within business relationships. For problematic business relationships the hiding of change is even more critical. How change fits into the picture is difficult to see in this stable view of business networks.

We seek research that takes an alternative perspective and attempts to think in terms of business networking and change occurring first, before stability arises from the pre-existing business network. In this strong change view, the network is continually changing without equilibrium and always becoming. Inherent in this view is a constant need to build and re-build managerial understanding of the network. The shift in emphasis is away from relationships and towards the processes managed by actors in the network. Here we seek to advance the substantive (Håkansson, Ford, Gadde, Snehota & Waluszewski 2009) and also the constructivist nature of business networks (Halinen, Törnroos & Elo 2013) with process research that addresses change.

Processes are a central concept for understanding emergence and change in any social context, but the nature of process is not widely discussed in business marketing research. In a strong change view, pre-existing relationship and network structures fade in importance and unfolding rather than stability appears as a defining network characteristic. According to Pettigrew (1997) and Van de Ven (1992) processes are human understandings of cause-effect associations based on inputs, contexts, actors and their connections, generative mechanisms, time connections and outcomes. Each of these elements is able to be re-conceptualized and in particular by problematizing the central construct of social and relational time (Halinen, Medlin & Törnroos 2012; Halinen & Törnroos 1995; Halinen & Törnroos 2005; Medlin 2004). Processes are time bound managerial and also theoretical concepts, but our understanding of how they are enacted in business networks is limited.

Without doubt a strong change perspective requires a qualitative and longitudinal approach, but to focus more on process and change also requires care in constructing the concepts that hold and allow apprehension of the evolving nature of business networks. Cross-case analyses of managerial and theoretical processes means also accounting more carefully for time periods, timing and pace of change. Thus, we also seek research that extends our understanding of methodological issues in researching business processes embedded in networks of actors.

On-going calls have been made for research on a relational ontology and for processual analysis in managerial theory and methods (Bizzi & Langley 2012; Emirbayer 1997; Emirbayer & Mische 1998; Langley 1999; Langley, Smallman, Tsoukas & Van de Ven 2013; Langley & Tsoukas 2010). However, that research has mainly focused on single entities and/or is within systems of external actors (Payne & Frow 2005; Srivastava, Shervani & Fahey 1999), rather than in inter-organizational network settings. What is called for is research on emergence and processes in which multiple actors collaborate in a dynamic network.

Methodologically, it is equally possible to embark on process studies though (1) formulating ex ante models of dynamics and testing these empirically or (2) to follow the process as it unfolds (Langley 1999; Van de Ven & Poole 2005). The first approach represents an exogenous view of change where existing trajectories or field forces are extrapolated into the future (Van de Ven & Poole 2005). In this approach interaction is not substantive and occurs across a theoretical field, where the influence is mostly systemic via mechanisms that affect an actor who is an object (see Lawrence, Winn & Jennings 2001). The alternate process approach follows the substantive interaction of actors as subjects in their world (Håkansson et al. 2009) and where change processes are endogenous in nature.

Rationale and Objectives for “Process thinking in dynamic business networks”

In this Special Issue we seek research, which extends our understanding of business process as a form of endogenous and enacted change within a dynamic business network. Our aim is to bring together different strands of research and spur conceptual development of new ways of understanding process as sets of multi-actor activities. We seek to create insights and momentum that will influence the next decade of business marketing thought and how it relates to processes and network dynamics. On the one hand, processes are open-ended, inclusive and ambiguous, and accept uncertainty in order to allow for novel combinations of knowledge. On the other hand, processes are governed in order not to lose momentum or increase confusion or allow actors to revert into existing frames of thinking. Thus, processual research offers a way to conceptualize change as the business network transforms and adjusts to take on ever new value creating activities.

This Special Issue seeks:

• Theoretical and empirical contributions that advance understanding of managerial processes in dynamic inter-organizational networks.
• Theoretical submissions that contrast and expose new meanings of the process concept in relational networks by using different research approaches (e.g. critical realist, moderate constructivist).
• Theoretical contributions that problematize and extend our understanding of the process concept when change is understood as endogenous, rather than exogenous, in nature.
• Conceptual, methodological and empirical advances which enable future orientated studies and perspectives in dynamic networks.
• Theoretical and empirical advances in conducting longitudinal qualitative research, including how to compare theoretically across cases according to processes and periods within cases.
• Longitudinal case studies dealing with change processes of interactive business relationships and analysing key change mechanisms in relation to extant literature.
• Theoretical and empirical papers that provide an understanding of how changes at different levels of social, geographic and international analysis are connected by substative processes.
• Contributions that improve our understanding of strategic alignment, where configurations of business processes and activities foster network development.

Important dates: Deadline for submission November 15, 2016

Guest Editors:

Professor Poul Houman Andersen
Aalborg University, Denmark
poa@business.aau.dk

Dr Christopher J. Medlin
University of Adelaide Business School, Australia
chris.medlin@adelaide.edu.au

Professor Jan-Åke Törnroos
School of Business and Economics, Åbo Akademi University, Finland
jtornroo@abo.fi

Submission Procedures

To submit a paper please visit the IMM editorial site

register as an author and submit the paper as the site will instruct you. When you get to the step in the process that asks you for the type of paper, select SI: Dynamic Business Networks. All queries about the special issue should be sent to the Guest Editors (see above).

References:

Bizzi, L. & Langley, A. (2012). Studying processes in and around networks. Industrial Marketing Management. doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2012.01.007.

Emirbayer, M. (1997). Manifesto for a relational sociology. The American Journal of Sociology. 103, (2), 281-318.

Emirbayer, M. & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? The American Journal of Sociology. 103, (4), 962-1010.

Håkansson, H. & Ford, D. (2002). How should companies interact in business networks? Journal of Business Research. 55, (2), 133-139.

Håkansson, H., Ford, D., Gadde, L.a.-E., Snehota, I. & Waluszewski, A. Business in networks. Glasgow, John Wiley & Sons, 2009.

Håkansson, H. & Snehota, I. (1989). No business is an island: The network concept of business strategy. Scandinavian Journal of Management. 5, (3), 187-200.

Halinen, A., Medlin, C.J. & Törnroos, J.-Å. (2012). Time and process in business network research. Industrial Marketing Management. 41, (2), 215-223.

Halinen, A. & Törnroos, J.-Å. The meaning of time in the study of industrial buyer-seller relationships. in Business marketing: An interaction and network perspective. K. Möller & D. Wilson, eds. Boston, Dordrecht and London, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995.

Halinen, A. & Törnroos, J.-Å. (2005). Using case methods in the study of contemporary business networks. Journal of Business Research. 58, (9), 1285-1297.

Halinen, A., Törnroos, J.-Å. & Elo, M.N. (2013). Network process analysis: An event-based approach to study business network dynamics. Industrial Marketing Management. 42, (8), 1213–1222.

Langley, A. (1999). Strategies for theorizing from process data. The Academy of Management Review. 24, (4), 691-710.

Langley, A., Smallman, C., Tsoukas, H. & Van de Ven, A.H. (2013). Process studies of change in organization and management: Unveiling temporality, activity, and flow. Academy of Management Journal. 56, (1), 1-13.

Langley, A. & Tsoukas, H. Introducing “perspectives on process organization studies”. in Perspectives on process organization studies: Process, sensemaking & organizing. T. Hernes & S. Maitlis, eds. New York, Oxford University Press, 2010.

Lawrence, T.B., Winn, M.I. & Jennings, P.D. (2001). The temporal dynamics of institutionalization. Academy of management Review. 26, (4), 624-644.

Medlin, C.J. (2004). Interaction in business relationships: A time perspective. Industrial Marketing Management. 33, (3), 185-193.

Payne, A. & Frow, P. (2005). A strategic framework for customer relationship management. Journal of Marketing. 69, (4), 167-176.

Pettigrew, A.M. (1997). What is a processual analysis? Scandinavian Journal of Management. 13, (4), 337-348.

Srivastava, R.K., Shervani, T.A. & Fahey, L. (1999). Marketing, business processes, and shareholder value: An organizationally embedded view of marketing activities and the discipline of marketing. Journal of Marketing. 63, (4), 168-179.

Van de Ven, A.H. (1992). Suggestions for studying strategy processes: A research note. Strategic Management Journal. 13, (S1), 169-188.

Van de Ven, A.H. & Poole, M.S. (2005). Alternative approaches for studying organizational change. Organization Studies. 26, (9), 1377-1404.

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