Network governance work: evidence from the video game industry

Many call for research invites for further investigation of the underlying processes, practices and specificities of governance in the network context. Through an examination of what governance involves and how does it occur in a French cluster of video game companies, our multimethod study provide useful insights in the functions and purposes of governance in an inter-organizational and collaborative context, the main tools and mechanisms that are being used and the structure supporting these purposes and mechanisms. Our findings shed also light upon the processual nature of governance in network context. Governance is a set of processes, or a “meta-process”, that are geared toward the creation, the maintenance and the evolution of collaboration relationships and the network as a collective actor. We refer to this process of governance functioning, evolution and continuous (re) evaluation as governance work.