Following their larger counterparts, an increasing number of small firms outsource their IT tasks to lower cost offshore destinations. For small firms, however, offshore outsourcing is a difficult undertaking as it involves high transaction costs. Online marketplaces for IT services, which have...

The purpose of the paper is to assess the current state of network research in China’s business system. Research on networks has developed significantly during the last decades in regards to analytic techniques, number of research projects, and accumulated findings. While research on networks...

In designing of production systems, economic and social goals can be combined, if ergonomics is integrated into the design process. More than 50 years of ergonomics research and practice have resulted in a large number of ergonomics standards for designing physical and organizational work...

This paper employs the methodology of Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE) to investigate under what conditions trust can be viable in markets. The emergence and breakdown of trust is modeled in a context of multiple buyers and suppliers. Agents adapt their trust in a partner, the weight...

With the emergence of smart business networks, agile networks, etc. as important research areas in management, for all the attractiveness of these concepts, a major issue remains around their design and the selection rules. While smart business networks should provide advantages due to the quick...

This paper summarizes key attributes and the uniqueness of smart business networks [1], to propose thereafter an operational implementation architecture. It involves, amongst others, the embedding of business logic specific to a network of business partners, inside the communications control...

This study examines the 'logic' or underlying causality of supply relationships. It develops and tests hypotheses, in a LISREL model, on detailed data for 553, 450 and 226 supply relationships in the US, Japanese and European automobile industries. The differences found between the three regions...

This article connects theory of learning with theory of governance, in the context of inter-firm relations. It recognizes fundamental criticism of transaction cost economics (TCE), but preserves elements from that theory. Two kinds of relational risk are identified: hold-up and spillover risk....

Innovation offers many opportunities for corporations. That is beyond dispute. The only question is how to make the most of them. In this lecture, I show what the process of innovation entails; I give examples of successful and failed innovations and I discuss the current issues and trends in...