Network-based organizing for product innovation: How power imbalances matter

Abstract

Where many organizations have to work together to execute a highly-interdependent task over a period of several years what is the likely fundamental basis to effectively governing inter-firm exchanges? The existing literature strongly asserts stable and trusting relations as the answer. Drawing on an ethnographic study of one such network form, this paper disputes this view to argue that power imbalances provide a fundamental and probably unavoidable basis for this form of organizing. To the extent that trusting relations arise, the paper argues that these will be as a response to how power is configured and used in the network.