Striving for network power: The perspective of solution integrators and suppliers

Abstract

2 STRIVING FOR NETWORK POWER: THE PERSPECTIVE OF SOLUTION INTEGRATORS AND SUPPLIERS

Servitization and advanced business services as levers for competitiveness

“…Where upstream firms have unique resources, such as books that are within copyright, they have power in the relationship and are able to reduce their dependence on downstream firms. This supports research findings that demonstrate how unique resources can improve value capture processes in the supply chain (Costa et al, 2013;Finne et al, 2015) Much of the servitization literature focuses upon manufacturing firms going downstream in search of revenue. Vendrell-Herrero et al provide quantitative analysis supporting research that highlights risks associated with servitization, in particular the risk that a firm's power and ability to capture value can be reduced (Kowalkowski et al, 2015).…”

Network positioning and risk perception in servitization: evidence from the UK road transport industry

“…Past research discusses how the most powerful partners secure greater shares of network profits (see for instance Gelderman et al, 2008;Meehan and Wright, 2012). In this context, firms gain power by controlling access to key resources, thereby influencing operational and strategic decisions of other value chain members (Finne et al, 2015). Moreover, these strategic decisions are closely related to the firms' accumulated knowledge (information asymmetry), valuation difficulty, and fears of opportunism (the disclosure dilemma) when selecting a partnership (Carter, 1989;Contractor and Ra, 2002;Li et al, 2008).…”

“…Previous papers on servitization and SCs examine development of firm strategy within a supply chain network -SCN- (Chang et al, 2012), firms' structural power derived from position in this network (Bastl et al, 2013), and ways of securing network power from the advanced services provider's perspective (Finne et al, 2015). Such work highlights the need for further analysis of assumptions underlying service-led growth achieved by manufacturers from a knowledge-based perspective (Valtakoski, 2016) and for clarification of how servitizing firms handle knowledge accumulation and willingness to share strategic information with network partners.…”

Material Intelligence: Cross-Organizational Collaboration Driven by Detailed Material Data

“…Our findings suggest that owning excessive amounts of data does not necessarily determine the company's success in the ability to leverage material intelligence. Instead of data protection, the companies should emphasize the potential to turn raw data into something more valuable and on how to utilize that data better than the rivals [15]. This leaves potential to find incentives for systems that enable managing the product life cycle in a closed-loop [27,40] which, in turn, would improve the sustainability of the operation [2].…”