Extreme internal–external industrial-service flexibilities and interfirm cooperative networks in high-technology machine manufacturing

Most interfirm studies focus only on the strategies of strategic partnerships, such as joint ventures, technology transferring agreements, licensing agreements; the study here provides interfirm-network knowledge protocols for designing interfirm-service processes in the high-technology machinery industry (HTMI) by small-and-medium enterprise (SME) networks from the perspectives of extremely-rapid industrial-service flexibility (X-ISF). Based on the decision system analysis (DSA) method, this study constructs an X-ISF research model consisting of major variables of extremely-rapid internal ISF (X-I ISF), extremely-rapid external ISF (X-E ISF), and cooperative networks. This study applies a mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) research design to understand interfirm-network decision-making and the influence of the antecedent conditions of internal and external X-ISF and cooperative upstream-to-downstream networks on firms' X-ISF performance. The study finds that the mutual relationships between X-I ISF and X-E ISF are substantially unbalanced — the impact on firm X-ISF performance by the external-to-internal (X-in) ISF is substantially greater than the impact from the internal-to-external (X-out) ISF. Recognize the need to lead with external-to-internal X-ISF to sustain the adoption-implementation of superior high-technology is the principal take-away strategy implication.