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1 – 10 of 25Enrico Baraldi, Francesco Ciabuschi, Luciano Fratocchi, Daniel Pedroletti and Antonio Picciotti
Reshoring implies the reconfiguration of supply networks. Focusing on the specific case of a born-offshored firm that engaged in reshoring of outsourced activities, this study…
Abstract
Purpose
Reshoring implies the reconfiguration of supply networks. Focusing on the specific case of a born-offshored firm that engaged in reshoring of outsourced activities, this study aims to analyse how initial key suppliers in the home country can help the reshoring firm to organize a new supply network.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is qualitative and based on a single exploratory case study. The data was collected from multiple primary and secondary sources, and using different techniques, such as in-depth interviews, direct observation and network pictures.
Findings
The study provides insights on how an initial key supplier can enable its customers’ reshoring in the home country. Specifically, the authors identify 10 roles played by a key supplier. The results also identify supply network formation as an essential component of the reshoring process.
Originality/value
This paper provides unique contributions. Firstly, it presents the specific and under-explored case of a born-offshored firm engaged in outsourced reshoring; secondly, it sheds light on the roles that key suppliers may play for the reshoring process; thirdly, it explores the formation of business relationships in the context of reshoring. In essence, the paper contributes to the reshoring literature, by stressing the importance of supply network formation in the reshoring process and by identifying the multiplicity of roles that key suppliers can play when implementing reshoring, and to the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) literature, by showing how relationships and networks develop during reshoring, a phenomenon so far understudied by IMP scholars.
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Andrea Perna, Thomas O’Toole, Enrico Baraldi and Gian Luca Gregori
This study aims to develop our understanding of the value co-creation process in business networks. This study identifies four key sub-processes that characterize the value…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to develop our understanding of the value co-creation process in business networks. This study identifies four key sub-processes that characterize the value co-creation journey as it unfolds across an inter-organizational network. These four sub-processes are opportunity co-creation, solution co-creation, complementary co-creation and activated co-creation.
Design/methodology/approach
Reflecting the exploratory nature of this research, the methodology relies on an in-depth case study, which is analyzed through the lens of the resource interaction occurring within the specific business relationships and collaborative episodes that affected the nine-year long development of Deko, a new architectural lighting solution.
Findings
The main contribution of the paper is identifying the sub-processes comprising the value co-creation journey of a technology development solution based on resource combining, re-combining and un-combining across a business network. That value co-creation occurs through a time-consuming journey requiring multiple episodes of collaboration can also inspire the practice of handling this process for instance for a small business such as the one featured in this case study.
Originality/value
This paper highlights that the value co-creation journey process has the potential to frame the unfolding of collaboration in practice for a small business.
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Sofia Wagrell and Enrico Baraldi
This paper aims to address the crucial interactions that a start-up enacts with actors from the public sphere in a context of medical technologies. The public actor commonly plays…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to address the crucial interactions that a start-up enacts with actors from the public sphere in a context of medical technologies. The public actor commonly plays multiple roles, ranging from co-developers and financiers to large-scale users, which are all pivotal to the development and survival of the new venture. The paper investigates the possible “dark sides” of a start-up’s marriage with a public partner, departing from three specific roles the public sphere can assume in relation to a start-up: as a development partner, as a financer and as a customer.
Design/methodology/approach
The study builds on an in-depth empirical case study of a Swedish med-tech startup company.
Findings
The authors find the financing role to be least problematic, whereas the customer role is the most problematic in that it provides numerous barriers to the possible development and growth of a start-up firm striving to get new customers in a public setting. Examples of the most prominent barriers found are regulations, complex decision-making processes and assessment elements of med-tech products that are outside the control of the startup firm, hence issues that cannot be handled within inter-organizational relationships.
Originality/value
The study builds on 27 in-depth interviews, which were undertaken during 2005-2013, thus contributing detailed data about a start-up’s many and crucial interactions with different public actors. Departing from three different roles, a public partner can adopt in relation to a start-up, (development, co-financer and customer) provides results with managerial implications for start-up’s and policy implications for health-care policy.
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Antonella La Rocca, Andrea Perna, Andrea Sabatini and Enrico Baraldi
While several studies have focused on the initial phases of new ventures and their first customer and supplier relationships, we have a limited understanding of how the new…
Abstract
Purpose
While several studies have focused on the initial phases of new ventures and their first customer and supplier relationships, we have a limited understanding of how the new venture’s portfolio of customer relationships emerges. This paper aims to explore the emergence of the customer relationship portfolio of a new venture and to investigate the effects of early relationships on subsequent ones.
Design/methodology/approach
Methodologically, the authors rely on a longitudinal single case study of a new venture which develops, implements and sells customized cost-management software. The study is exploratory and based on 24 in-depth interviews.
Findings
The findings show that the development of a customer portfolio depends on the cumulative effect of heterogeneous elements and network connections. These include the initial link between the new venture and the first customer and a subsequent series of interconnections that develop with the emerging network capability of the new venture.
Originality/value
As one of the few studies that explore the emergence of new ventures’ customer relationship portfolio, this study demonstrates the value of applying a relational/network approach for studying relationship portfolio dynamics.
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Alexandra Waluszewski, Enrico Baraldi and Andrea Perna
Contemporary innovation policy investments rests on the assumption that the main problematic interface is the one between the non-business developing setting and a rather…
Abstract
Purpose
Contemporary innovation policy investments rests on the assumption that the main problematic interface is the one between the non-business developing setting and a rather friction-free producer and user setting. Given a business landscape characterized by interdependencies, any innovation attempt will be faced with complex interfaces also within and among all these settings. The purpose of this paper is to shed light over this issue through the investigation of the interface between policy and a specific innovation journey. The attention is directed to the creation and distribution of social-material values; and the translation of these values into a monetary dimension.
Design/methodology/approach
To fulfill this aim the authors utilize an empirical study on the commercialization of university research results in the field of solar power technology, based on the ARA model as a conceptual and methodological foundation, with a focus on the establishment of resource combinations, activity links and actor bonds in the involved developing, producing and using settings. In order to pin-point the creation of social-material values and the establishment of a monetary dimension the authors used a model adapted from Håkansson and Olsen (2015).
Findings
From a national policy perspective, the transnational nature of innovation processes and the connectedness of resources across different, often far-away places, entail a loss of control on the social-material and monetary benefits of innovation; even more so if the policy of one country stands against that of another country. Still, not only policy but also representatives for academic research and business seem to consider the transnational aspect as an exception.
Research limitations/implications
Due to that the embedding in the user setting did not occur as expected; with the Swedish focal firm as main interface, but from a Chinese firm that the authors did not have access to, the main focus is on the developing and the producing setting, while the embedding in the user setting is covered through indirect information.
Practical implications
The role that established production structures have for the embedding of innovations into producing and using settings seems to be neglected in policy circles – although these have a strong impact on the creation of social-material value and a monetary flow.
Social implications
See practical implication.
Originality/value
The paper underlines the impact of interfaces with established production structures for the creation of social-material value and monetary flow – and for transnational dimension of the innovation journey.
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Carl Kronlid and Enrico Baraldi
This paper aims to focus on time-constrained interactions involving industry and public actors, mainly universities, conducting research. This kind of interaction has become…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to focus on time-constrained interactions involving industry and public actors, mainly universities, conducting research. This kind of interaction has become increasingly important to develop new pharmaceuticals, especially antibiotics. The proposed theoretical frame relies on industrial marketing and purchasing’s interactive perspective on inter-organizational relationships and especially the activities, resource, actors model, combined with key concepts on temporary organizing and project management. This study identifies the temporality and time constraints imposed by this project on public–private interactions, specific coordination tools used to create such temporality and time constraints and their consequences, including positive and negative effects for the interacting parties.
Design/methodology/approach
The study builds on a single in-depth qualitative case study of a major antibiotics R&D collaboration project called ENABLE.
Findings
For negative consequences, this model includes the need for constantly rebuilding trust due to fast turnover of actors, difficulties in combining resources as efficiently as possible, resource constraints, bottlenecks and neglect of some activities, such as publishing, which are normally pivotal for universities. Despite these problematic consequences of temporality, resources are rapidly made available and new competencies learned quickly. Another positive effect is the possibility to achieve complex adaptations of resources and activities even in short time frames. Importantly, projects can act as a springboard for the parties to continue collaboration and in the long term develop a continuous business relationship.
Originality/value
Based on the findings the authors develop a model of time-constrained inter-organizational interaction between public and private organizations.
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Enrico Baraldi, Francesco Ciabuschi, Olof Lindahl, Andrea Perna and Gian Luca Gregori
The purpose of this paper is to explore two specific areas pertaining to industrial networks and international business (IB). First, the authors look at how business relationships…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore two specific areas pertaining to industrial networks and international business (IB). First, the authors look at how business relationships influence the internationalization in time, from the establishment of the first subsidiary in a foreign market to the following ones, and in space, that is, across different markets. Second, the authors investigate how an increasing external network dependence of subsidiaries in their internationalization may cause a detachment of a subsidiary from the mother company as its knowledge becomes insufficient to guide a subsidiary’s internationalization.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper utilizes an exploratory, longitudinal, single-case study of Loccioni – a manufacturer of measuring and automatic control systems for industrial customers – to illustrate the specific dynamics of the influences of industrial networks on the internationalization of subsidiaries.
Findings
The case study helps to elucidate the roles, entailing also free will and own initiative, of small suppliers’ subsidiaries which operate inside several global factories, and how “surfing” on many different global factories, by means of several local subsidiaries, actually supports these suppliers’ own international developments. This notion adds to our understanding of the global factory phenomenon a supplier focus that stresses how the role of suppliers is not merely that of being passive recipients of activities and directions from a focal orchestrating firm, but can also be that of initiative-takers themselves.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the IMP tradition by providing a multi-layered and geographically more fine-grained view of the network embedding companies that operate on internationalized markets. This paper thereby sheds light on a less investigated area of research within the IMP tradition: the link between internationalization in different countries and the interconnectedness between the industrial networks spanning these countries. At the same time, this paper contributes to IB theories by showing how a late-internationalizing SME can enter highly international markets by “plugging into” several established “Global Factories” as a way to exploit further opportunities for international expansion.
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Enrico Baraldi, Francesco Ciabuschi and Luciano Fratocchi
Antibiotics shortages have become an increasingly common problem in Europe because of several reasons, including the offshoring of the production of active pharmaceutical…
Abstract
Purpose
Antibiotics shortages have become an increasingly common problem in Europe because of several reasons, including the offshoring of the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients for many of these products to low production cost countries, such as China and India. The problem has deteriorated because of the Covid-19 crisis that has put most global value chains (GVCs) under great stress. This situation has boosted extensive discussions among academics, practitioners and policymakers on possible changes to the configuration of GVCs. This paper aims to focus specifically on antibiotics supply chains from the perspective of a small country (Sweden), and analyse the pros and cons of backshoring and nearshoring alternatives, as a means to reduce drug shortages.
Design/methodology/approach
This work adopts a systemic perspective to capture the implications of reshoring for the different stakeholders involved in the antibiotics field. The present meso-analysis, focusing at the industry level, is based on multiple sources of primary data collected between 2014 and 2021, including participation in policy-related projects and interviews with over 100 representatives of key stakeholders in the antibiotics field.
Findings
This paper shows how reshoring can address the problems of drug shortages and reduce availability risk in antibiotics’ GVCs. However, the authors show that no simple and best solution exists because both alternatives of reshoring, i.e. backshoring and nearshoring, entail pros and cons for different stakeholders. The authors conclude with implications for policymakers and managers.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis of pros and cons of both backshoring and nearshoring for various stakeholders offers relevant implications for research on operations and supply management, international business and economics/political science.
Originality/value
This paper looks at reshoring as a policy-driven decision and provides an innovative systemic perspective to analyse the implications for different stakeholders of two reshoring options concerning the antibiotics supply chain.
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Enrico Baraldi and Johnny Lind
A highly relevant issue for management is the measurement and appropriation of jointly created value. The existence of relationships is challenging for accounting and for the…
Abstract
A highly relevant issue for management is the measurement and appropriation of jointly created value. The existence of relationships is challenging for accounting and for the sharing and appropriation of values. Interdependences that characterise business relationships make value measurement and appropriation problematic. Yet, measuring value is important for orienting managers’ behaviours, and it affects the solutions implemented in business relationships on which value creation and appropriation depend. Values are created in relationships because resources are combined through relationships. Defining clear boundaries is important to produce measurements, but setting boundaries in interdependent relationships and networks is always problematic, and to some extent, arbitrary.
Business relationships have a number of soft and multiple effects that are difficult to measure and consequently difficult to divide among the involved business actors creating specific appropriation problems. An interesting development is underway as companies attempt to develop special tools for handling these problems.
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Enrico Baraldi and Torkel Strömsten
The role of management control has not received sufficient attention in the literature on value creation so far. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the role of control in…
Abstract
The role of management control has not received sufficient attention in the literature on value creation so far. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the role of control in value creation in industrial networks. More specifically, the aim is to examine the management and control of interfaces between key resources within and between firms, in the networks surrounding firms, when they attempt to create value. All the firms that take part in a value-creation process have both formal and informal control systems: these firms have budgets, specific routines, reward systems, and sanctioned “ways to behave.” The paper relates the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) group's research on interaction, relationships, and networks with control literature, and presents a framework for controlling resource interfaces in a network setting. Two in-depth cases illustrate the role of control in value creation. The first case covers the development of a low-weight newspaper grade that Holmen and its paper mill Hallsta initiated. The second case examines the attempt to develop and commercialize a new, energy efficient pulping technology.