Call for Papers
Susanne Gretzinger, University of Southern Denmark, Sønderborg
Simon Fietze, Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg (Germany)
Wenzel Matiaske, Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg (Germany)
Special Issue: Innovation Networks
Economic operations and thus innovations are embedded in social relations and structures.
Therefore, the organizational units that create innovation are not individual businesses, but usually networks. From a resource point of view, networks hold a variety of advantages for their members, such as access to material and immaterial resources, information and knowledge.
Powell et al. (1996), for example, conclude in their study on innovation behavior in pharmaceutical companies that companies that are not able to initiate networks or form a cooperation have strategic disadvantages on the market. In this context, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are considered to be dependent on the social capital of networks, because of the limited resources they have under direct control due to their size.
In the European context national economies are depending very much on SMEs. Depending on definition the companies of the European economies are consisting between 70 and 95 % of small or medium-sized companies. While huge companies are hosting all the resources, which are in need to set up innovation capabilities themselves, SME are depending much more on cooperation compared to huge companies. Furthermore SMEs do have to take higher risks into accountwhen cooperating with other partners. Huge companies do have much better possibilities just to buy in complementary resources while SMEs have to develop trustful relationship to prevent losing their competitive edge or from dropping into the trap of the dark side of social capital.
The importance of innovation for national economies has motivated policy makers to promote innovation capabilities of their economies and therewith the circumstances of SMEs. To promote economically relevant information to SMEs, the public sector provides specific advisory services. From strategic management’s point of view, the involvement of cooperation partners and intermediaries is on the one hand necessary but on the other hand accompanied by the risk of losing specific knowledge to the business environment.
In this special issue, we would like to discuss innovation networks of businesses – in particular SMEs – from a social network analysis (SNA) perspective. Theoretical and conceptual contributions as well as empirical work linking innovation networks of businesses and SNA are of interest.
Deadline
Full papers for this special edition of ‘management revue’ must be with the editors by October 31st, 2013. All submissions will be subject to a double blind review process. Papers invited for a ‘revise and resubmit’ are due on January 31st, 2014. It is anticipated that the special edition will appear as Issue No. 2 in 2014. Please submit your papers electronically via the journal submission system at https://hermes.hsu-hh.de/mrev/ using ‘Innovation Networks’ as article section
Looking forward to hearing from you
Susanne Gretzinger
Simon Fietze
Wenzel Matiaske