Understanding the structural characteristics of a firm's whole buyer-supplier network and its impact on international business performance Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2019, Academy of International Business. Building on the network theory and the concept of organizational ambidexterity, we investigate the impact of structural characteristics of a firms whole buyersupplier network: network density, betweenness centralization, and average clustering coefficient on its international business (IB) performance. We also explore the moderating roles of average path length and PageRank centrality. Using a manually-collected dataset and a robust empirical methodology, we find that, while network density is negatively related, betweenness centralization and average clustering coefficient have an inverted U-shape and a U-shaped relationship with IB performance, respectively. We also find significant moderation effects, and, in the process, we show the economic importance of firms whole buyersupplier network to their IB performance. We contribute to the international business and whole buyersupplier network literature.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES

altmetric score

  • 0.75

author list (cited authors)

  • Sharma, A., Kumar, V., Yan, J., Borah, S. B., & Adhikary, A.

citation count

  • 38

complete list of authors

  • Sharma, Amalesh||Kumar, V||Yan, Jun||Borah, Sourav Bikash||Adhikary, Anirban

publication date

  • April 2019