Network Advantage


Book Description

Companies made more than 42,000 alliances over the past decade worldwide, many of which failed to deliver strong results. This book explains why and how you can seize the benefits from your business’s network of alliances with customers, suppliers and competitors. This network can provide three key advantages: · superior information · better cooperation · increased power Network Advantage shows how awareness of these three advantages can help align your portfolio of alliances with your corporate strategy to maximize advantages from existing networks and to position your business as an industry leader. This book is written by three leading authorities in the field of organizational management who work with many international corporate clients. Based on groundbreaking research and illustrative cases, it provides practical tools to help you think strategically about reconfiguring your alliances and partnerships. For business executives, consultants, and executive MBAs who want to get the most advantage from the combined power of their alliance portfolios, Network Advantage offers in-depth, practical guidance. Make it your first strategic connection to gaining competitive advantage! Companies’ connections to other firms—their network of alliances—matter for economic success. In this practical, jargon-free, evidence-based book, three experienced scholar/educators provide practical tools to understand your company’s network positioning and what to do to build webs of relationships that provide competitive advantage and economic value. —Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and co-author of The Knowing-Doing Gap. The book, Network Advantage, presents compelling ideas and is a must-read. It articulates three different perspectives to think about a firm’s network advantage and shows how a firm can maximize the value of its alliance network. The book is filled with theoretical and practical insights on the topic and offers captivating case studies to illustrate its key points. It is fun to read. I highly recommend this book. —W. Chan Kim, The BCG Chair Professor of INSEAD and the Co-director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute In this eminently researched book, the authors show how executives and entrepreneurs alike can unlock the value of alliances. And the book comes with some "secrets" to success that most managers overlook. Every CEO, executive and entrepreneur who are collaborating with other firms ought to read this book. —Morten T. Hansen, Professor at University of California at Berkeley, author of Collaboration and co-author of Great by Choice. Don’t compete alone! “Network Advantage” provides a fresh perspective on how all firms can benefit from their alliances and partnerships. The authors seamlessly integrate academic research and real life examples into a practical step by step guide for unleashing the power, information and cooperation advantages available in networks. A must read for thoughtful executives and entrepreneurs alike. —Stein Ove Fenne, President, Tupperware U.S. & Canada Having the "right" business network is everything for a company's success in Asia and worldwide. With its rich cases and practical tools, this book is an indispensable guide for a thoughtful executive on how to design, build and manage a network that will make your firm globally competitive. —Yong-Kyung Lee, Former CEO of Korean Telecom, Member of the Korean National Assembly. Alliances and Partnerships, in their various formats and guises, are the bridges that allow businesses to thrive in their ecosystems by leveraging each other's strengths. The authors show how those bridges, when used appropriately, can help your firm create an alliance network to enhance your business power. The book contains many examples and models to help you shape your own alliance strategy in a world of ever increasing co-opetition. —Ricardo T. Dias, Strategic Alliances Director, Hewlett Packard (HP) Software, Asia Pacific & Japan




Neighbor Networks


Book Description

There is a moral to this book, a bit of Confucian wisdom often ignored in social network analysis: "Worry not that no one knows you, seek to be worth knowing." This advice is contrary to the usual social network emphasis on securing relations with well-connected people. Neighbor Networks examines the cases of analysts, bankers, and managers, and finds that rewards, in fact, do go to people with well-connected colleagues. Look around your organization. The individuals doing well tend to be affiliated with well-connected colleagues. However, the advantage obvious to the naked eye is misleading. It disappears when an individual's own characteristics are held constant. Well-connected people do not have to affiliate with people who have nothing to offer. This book shows that affiliation with well-connected people adds stability but no advantage to a person's own connections. Advantage is concentrated in people who are themselves well connected. This book is a trail of argument and evidence that leads to the conclusion that individuals make a lot of their own network advantage. The social psychology of networks moves to center stage and personal responsibility emerges as a key theme. In the end, the social is affirmed, but with an emphasis on individual agency and the social psychology of networks. The research gives new emphasis to Coleman's initial image of social capital as a forcing function for human capital. This book is for academics and researchers of organizational and network studies interested in a new angle on familiar data, and as a supplemental reading in graduate courses on social networks, stratification, or organizations. A variety of research settings are studied, and diverse theoretical perspectives are taken. The book's argument and evidence are supported by ample appendices for readers interested in background details.




Perpetuating Advantage


Book Description

Injustices are, in the first instance, brute acts of identifiable individuals. But they are typically perpetuated, more subtly, through seemingly innocent workings of innocuous social structures. Critics of structural injustice are quick to call out that ruse. They say much about all the sites where such structural injustices reside - but without saying much, as yet, about how exactly structural injustice actually works. By what specific mechanisms are unfair advantages and disadvantages perpetuated? What, specifically, can we do to interrupt them? That is the focus of this book, in which Robert Goodin identifies several fundamental mechanisms of structural injustice: social position, networks, language, social expectations and norms, reputation, and organization. His discussion is deeply informed by a wide range of social sciences, mined with a philosopher's sharp eye to what matters and lucidly explained with a deft turn of phrase. Having exposed each of those specific mechanisms of structural injustice, Goodin proceeds to explore what they all have in common. The underlying drivers, he shows, are a combination of scale effects and attention scarcities. That combination limits - but also informs - what can reasonably be done to overcome the various, nefarious mechanisms that perpetuate unfair social advantage and disadvantage.




Social Networks and the Life Course


Book Description

This volume engages the interface between the development of human lives and social relational networks. It focuses on the integration of two subfields of sociology/social science--the life course and social networks. Research practitioners studying social networks typically focus on social structure or social organization, ignoring the complex lives of the people in those networks. At the same time, life course researchers tend to focus on individual lives without necessarily studying the contexts of social relationships in which lives are embedded and “linked” to one another through social networks. These patterns are changing and this book creates an audience of researchers who will better integrate the two subfields. It covers the role of social networks across the life span, from childhood and adolescence, to midlife, through old age.




Neighbor Networks


Book Description

In this book Burt examines the cases of analysts, bankers, and managers, and find that rewards, in fact, do go to people with well-connected colleagues. It shows how individuals make use of their social networks to further their careers.




Contemporary Perspectives on Organizational Social Networks


Book Description

Social network analysis has transformed the study of organizations over the past 30 years.




Innovation, Technology and Hypercompetition


Book Description

In an increasingly technologically-led century the striking pattern emerging in firms’ innovative activities is their competition for a technological leadership position in situations best described as races. A 'race' is an interactive pattern characterized by firms constantly trying to get ahead of their rivals, or trying not to fall too far behind. In high technology industries, where customers are willing to pay a premium for advanced technology, leadership translates into increasing returns in the market through positive network externalities. Innovation, Technology and Hypercompetition synthesizes and unifies the various methodological approaches for the industry-specific analysis of fast changing competitive positions driven by relentless innovation (hypercompetition). Game-theoretic and agent-based tools are applied to competitive industries in various market settings and in a global context. Rivalry of this sort is seen to extend to the catching up and forging ahead of regions and nations. In this revealing volume, Hans-Werner Gottinger brings his expert eye to this issue and employs various tools from economic theory to attain this end. He provides the behavioural foundations for what is driving globalization, in this, a volume of interest to academic economists, legal experts, management consultants and practitioners alike.




'A' Level Computing


Book Description

A textbook for 'A' Level computing organised in modular format for new AQA specification.




Networks


Book Description

In the last 20 years interest in network phenomena has grown immensely among anthropologists, psychologists, political scientists, economists and lawyers. Empirical observation shows that network arrangements can be found in many branches of business. This is often linked to rapid changes in today's markets and technologies, but it is not the only reason. Legal institutions have been at the centre of private law since the industrial revolution but today contracts and corporations cannot cope with the risks and opportunities posed by networks. Legal practice needs solutions which go beyond the classical traditions of thinking in the dichotomy of contract and corporation. This volume is the outcome of a conference held in Fribourg, Switzerland, which focused on the legal treatment of contractual networks, in particular questions of network expectations, the fragility of network institutions, and the question of how law can minimise network specific risks towards third parties. The contributors, among them many of the world's leading scholars in this field, include Roger Brownsword, Simon Deakin, Gunther Teubner, Hugh Collins and Marc Amstutz. The book will be of interest to scholars of contract, corporate law, and legal theory.




Handbook of Research on International Entrepreneurship


Book Description

Dana s Handbook is an essential read for international entrepreneurship scholars as well as policymakers and practitioners concerned with the dynamics associated with the international entrepreneurship process. Succinct reviews of the literature and useful summary tables relating to key themes and studies are presented by a number of contributors. . . Paul Westhead, International Small Business Journal This is a formidable and weighty tome. . . More important than sheer quantity is consideration of the quality, and here the broad spread yet eclectic choice of the research papers is most enlightening. The contributing authors have collectively condensed much of the knowledge garnered from the past five years of this global field into one handy sourcebook. . . The end result is, indeed, a fresh recognition, if recognition still needs to be made, of the major importance of this new global growth phenomenon of international entrepreneurship. Mark Haydon, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation The Handbook is a nearly comprehensive reference work to the field that will be useful to scholars new to the area as well as those already engaged in it. . . I was impressed by the diversity of the authors. . . The Handbook is an excellent broad reference to the field. Ben Oviatt, Journal of International Business Studies Over the last few years there has been an increased interest in research on the internationalization of new ventures and the global challenges facing growing young businesses. The Handbook of Research on International Entrepreneurship has collected and synthesized the contributions of leading researchers in an effort to define and categorize the unique contributions and state-of-the-art of this emerging field. It provides a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary treatment that advances the frontiers of knowledge regarding the fundamental concepts, methods, and theories of international entrepreneurship. The Handbook should serve as both an authoritative and comprehensive reference work for researchers, and a state-of-the-art compilation of new insights for educational leaders. Ari Ginsberg, New York University Stern School of Business, US Entrepreneurship and international business have remained separate subjects for far too long. The study of international entrepreneurship thrives on the cross-fertilisation of ideas between these fields. It is one of the most dynamic research areas in economics and management. The contributors to this Handbook are the pioneers in the field, and this volume provides a definitive survey of their work. Mark Casson, University of Reading, UK These notable researchers share a common dedication to rigorous methodologies and vigorous research. Together in this volume, the researchers have assembled and presented a cross-section of tested methods, and innovative approaches. These contributions are an inspiration to younger researchers, and this bids fair to set the tone, and level of intellectual rigour and vigour for future research in the emerging field of international entrepreneurship. From the preface by Bob Kirk, University of Canterbury, New Zealand This unique reference book provides an array of diverse perspectives on international entrepreneurship, a new and emerging field of research that blends concepts and methodologies from more traditional social sciences. The Handbook includes chapters written by top researchers of economics and sociology, as well as academic leaders in the fields of entrepreneurship and international business. State-of-the-art contributions provide up-to-date literature reviews, making this book essential for the researcher of entrepreneurship and the internationalisation of entrepreneurs.