Authors: ?ukasz Ma?ys; Justyna ?wiatowiec-Szczepa?ska; Micha? Zdziarski
The fundamental question of management research is to explore the determinants of differences in company performance. These determinants are both exogenous and endogenous. Network literature highlights the importance of external resources available to a firm through its network (Håkansson and Johanson, 1992: Gulati et al., 2000). Networks can be considered in a variety of contexts, including a structural, cognitive, institutional or cultural context (Zukin and DiMaggio, 1990). The main emphasis of our research is on the structural context that either constrains or facilitates the results achieved by firms. The main objective of the presented research is primarily to test the relationship between the performance of companies and their position within a network. The structural variables that were used to explain the relationship between network effects and organizational-level outcomes were operationalized by positional and structural network measures (Burt, 1992, Freeman, 1977, 1979: Provan, Fish and Sydow, 2007: Zaheer and Bell, 2005). The empirical field of this research were companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. This dataset consists of nearly 400 companies. The concern in this research was to analyse the corporate networks consisting of boards and ownership ties using the technique of social network analysis (Borgatti and Halgin, 2011). Data were retrieved through the IPG GOLD database and the companies’ financial reports. The approach presented in this research project is largely innovative. A comparatively small number of papers have applied network analysis to the governance and control of organizations (e.g. Conyon and Muldoon, 2008). Existing studies usually concern some aspects of the corporate network, including networks resulting from ownership links (Vitali, Glattfelder and Battiston, 2011: Rotundo and D’Arcangelis, 2010), networks of interlocking directorships (Kogut, Walker 2001), networks of joint projects (Dimitrios, 2010), etc. A combination of different approaches and the analysis of different relationships were applied in this research. Additionally, this study developed an important strategic variable – the company’s position in the network that is created by the relational resources of the specific network members. The optimization of the company’s position in the network refers not only to the company’s directly observed part of the network but also to its broader context. Johanson and Mattsson (1992) described network position as an actor’s interpretation of position as it relates to network identity construction. The results of our research underline the importance of ownerships links and firm’s positions in corporate networks in the context of firms’ performance and strategic risk.
Journal: n.a. (n.a. – n.a.)
Web Address: n.a.
Publish Year: 2016
Conference: Poznan, Poland (2016)