This book systematizes the concepts of business relationships and network embeddedness, taking a new approach to internationalization, relevant for the global economy. It reflects the growing importance of network internationalization theory and explores the impact of embeddedness in domestic and foreign relationships on a company’s performance. The author questions the validity of the distinction between domestic and foreign activity of companies and demonstrates that in the B2B market, there are actually no exclusively domestic companies which are not directly or indirectly connected with foreign entities. Chapters cover both small to medium sized enterprises and large multinational corporations, presenting a qualitative analysis of over 400 companies including case studies from the IT and furniture industries. This informative study will provide useful insight for academics and students of business and management, international business and organization studies.

The healthcare sector has never been under as much pressure as it is today. This pressure has motivated organizations to reinvent themselves, forcing management and marketing to take a more active role. Due to this reinvention, organizations must incorporate a stronger culture of management and marketing orientation that allows companies to define their course, optimize their resources, communicate with their stakeholders more efficiently, and encourage customers to become more involved with the company. This need is particularly urgent in the healthcare sector, as its weight in the economy has grown recently and it must prepare for economic recovery. Management and Marketing for Improved Competitiveness and Performance in the Healthcare Sector provides knowledge and skills to apply management and marketing on strategic, tactical, and operational aspects with an emphasis on the healthcare industry. Various aspects of management and marketing, such as operations management, quality management, human resources, brand management, and digital marketing, are discussed. The book is ideal for management and marketing academics, their students (undergraduate/graduate programs), researchers, managers, advertisers, healthcare organizations, hospital boards, pharmaceutical representatives, and marketers who need to optimize the potential of management marketing applied in the healthcare industry.

Social Movements and Networks examines the extent to which a network approach should inform research on collective action. For the first time in a single volume, leading social movements researchers systematically map out and assess the contribution of social network approaches to their field of enquiry in light of broader theoretical perspective. By exploring how networks affect individual contributions to collective action in both democratic and non-democratic organizations, and how patterns of inter-organizational linkages affect the circulation of resources within and between movements, the authors show how network concepts improve our grasp of the relationship between social movements and elites and of the dynamics of the political processes.

Advances in Service Network Analysis examines advances in the management and analysis of networks of organizations in service industries. In recent years recognition of the significance of inter-organizational networks for the provision of complex services, for example at tourist destinations, has stimulated discussion of numerous issues of theoretical and practical significance. These topics include governance, collaboration and partnerships between organizations of varying scale, sophistication and expertise, concern about leadership and trust in the management of service networks, and their overall contribution to social capital development in regions, sectors and in emergent economies. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Service Industries Journal.

This book presents more than four decades of research in international business at the Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University. Gradually, this research has been recognized as 'The Uppsala School'. The work in Uppsala over the years reflects a broad palette of issues and approaches.

Technological innovation is fundamental to firm performance and economic prosperity. The aim of this book is to contribute to an in-depth understanding of collective innovation processes by analyzing publicly funded R&D cooperation and innovation networks in the German laser industry. Standing in a neo-Schumpeterian tradition, it employs interdisciplinary analytical concepts and draws upon a unique longitudinal dataset from the laser industry that covers more than two decades of observations. In brief, the book makes a valuable contribution by exploring how and why firm-specific R&D cooperation activities and network positions, large-scale network patterns, and evolutionary network change processes affect the innovative performance of laser source manufacturers in Germany.

The current book on Nework Governance contributes to the literature by offering new perspectives on network goals and performance, inter-organizational learning and trust in alliances, corporate governance issues in cooperatives, governance of cross-border retail networks, contract design and governance innovations in cooperatives and fanchising.