Gerrit Willem Ziggers

Inter-firm network capability: how it affects buyer-supplier performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer a view that a firms critical resources and capabilities span firm boundaries, and are embedded in inter‐firm resources and routines.Design/methodology/approach – Building on a capability view the paper argues that firms can engender sustainable competitive advantage by enabling firms to build and leverage inter‐organizational relationships to generate relational rents by: fostering close working relationships with a limited number of suppliers; building effective network structures, and developing a long term orientation. Using PLS path modelling, the paper empirically tests a number of hypothesized relationships based on a sample of 176 Dutch firms.Findings – The results demonstrate that inter‐firm network capability significantly and substantially affects supplier performance as well as buyer performance, thereby providing evidence of the predictive validity of the inter‐firm network capability construct.Originality/value – The study contributes to a more...

Multilateral Boundary Spanners: Creating Virtuous Cycles in the Development of Health Care Networks.

Understanding how health care networks achieve their goals is critical for managers and researchers alike. Our study addresses this issue by applying qualitative methods to retrospectively study the involvement of boundary spanners in the setup and implementation of a health care network in the Netherlands. We found that boundary spanners who acted multilaterally, that is, both within and across organizations, could successfully represent their organizations’ interests at the network level and implement the required intraorganizational developments. By acting multilaterally, these boundary spanners generated virtuous cycles in the development of the network, whereby their successful actions supported the actions of their subordinates in setting up and implementing network agreements. In contrast, boundary spanners who had not been acting multilaterally before the network’s kickoff were insufficiently prepared to enact their network-related tasks, and only successfully did so once they began operating both within and across organizations.

Development through Fractals: Strategic and Operational Cycles in Healthcare Collaborations

This paper addresses the development of healthcare collaborations by examining how inter-organizational strategic and operational processes unfold and are aligned with each other. Based on Ring and...