Inside the incubator – business relationship creations among incubated firms

PublikationArtikel (med peer review)

Business relationship, Christina Öberg, incubator

Sammanfattning

Purpose
Incubators, as providers of advice and resources, suggest fostering the development of early-idea firms. Literature and practice seem to suggest an ever-increasing amount of incubator support. The creation of business relationships is at the heart of any business development, and this paper addresses whether a laissez-faire incubator fosters the creation of business relationships. The purpose of this paper is to explore the creation of business relationships among incubated firms during and after their time in the incubator along with the roles that these relationships play for the incubated firms.

Design/methodology/approach
Empirically, the paper is based on retrospective interviews with representatives of all incubated firms in a university incubator. A total of fifteen interviews were conducted with representatives of the incubated firms, the incubator and its owners, complemented by secondary data sources.

Findings
The paper points out three antecedents for business relationship creation: the lack of experience and connections; convenience; and trust based on the interactions with others in the incubator. These antecedents are connected to the roles of transforming businesses and of adaptation in the dyadic relationships. The laissez-faire incubator helped through the learning-by-doing among the incubated firms, which made them focus on business relationship creation from early on.

Originality/value
Most incubator research portrays the unilateral transfer of knowledge from the incubator to the incubated firm, with the latter being a service taker rather than a co-producer. The paper adds knowledge about business relationships among firms in incubators and the roles that these business relationships could play for the firms. The focus on an incubator providing limited support is of high practical relevance, given the trend of incubators facilitating more and more services.

Öberg, C., Klinton, M. & Stockhult, H. (2020). Inside the incubator – Business relationship creations among incubated firms.Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, 35(11), 1767-1784.

Trust and the sharing economy

Artikel (med peer review)Publikation

Pelgander, L., Öberg, C., & Barkenäs, L.

Publiceringsår

(2022).

Publicerat i

Digital Business, 100048.

Sammanfattning

Trust is intimately connected with relational interactions, but does it also have a role to play in transactional exchanges? How would it differ? While trust has been discussed extensively in sharing economy research, the focus has been on trust cues created in exchanges between strangers, thereby approaching trust empirically rather than theoretically. Focusing on user trust, this paper investigates how trust constructs from relational interactions manifest in the sharing economy. This paper bridges sharing economy research with trust as a theoretical construct to investigate the well-established variables of ability, benevolence and integrity as components of trust in the sharing economy. The paper is based on a questionnaire survey of 175 users of Uber’s co-driving service UberPop. Descriptive and regression analyses were conducted focusing on user trust in the platform and providers. The findings indicate how trust in transactional exchanges is shaped differently compared with trust in relational interactions. User trust in providers, which diminishes over time, is based on emotional traits, while user trust in the platform is based on functional components. The platform and providers thereby complement each other in terms of the trust created. This paper contributes to research on trust by focusing on trust in transactional exchanges, and to research on the sharing economy by investigating trust based on theoretical constructs.

Episodic supply chains at times of disruption

Artikel (med peer review)Publikation

Öberg, C. (2022).

Publiceringsår

2022

Publicerat i

Supply Chain Management: An International Journal.

Sammanfattning

Purpose

Additive manufacturing has been described as converting supply chains into demand chains. By focusing on metal additive manufacturing as a contemporary technology causing ongoing disruption to the supply chain, the purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss how incumbent firms act during an ongoing, transformational disruption of their supply chain.

Design/methodology/approach

Interviews and secondary data, along with seminars attracting approximately 600 individuals operating in metal additive manufacturing, form the empirical basis for this paper.

Findings

The findings of this paper indicate how disruption occurs at multiple positions in the supply chain. Episodic positions as conceptualised in this paper refer to how parties challenged by disruption attempt to reach normality while speeding the transformational disruption.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to previous research by theorising about episodic positions in light of a supply chain disruption. The empirical data are unique in how they capture supply chain change at the time of disruption and illustrate disruptive, transformational change to supply chains. The paper interlinks research on disruption from the innovation and supply chain literature, with contributions to both.

Last-mile logistics of perishable products: a review of effectiveness and efficiency measures used in empirical research

Artikel (med peer review)Publikation

Lagin, M., Håkansson, J., Nordström, C., Nyberg, R. G., & Öberg, C.

Publiceringsår

2022

Publicerat i

International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 50(13), 116-139.

Sammanfattning

Purpose

Current online business development redistributes last-mile logistics (LML) from consumer to retailer and producer. This paper identifies how empirical LML research has used and defined logistic performance measures for key grocery industry actors. Using a multi-actor perspective on logistic performance, the authors discuss coordination issues important for optimising LML at system level.

Design/methodology/approach

A semi-systematic literature review of 85 publications was conducted to analyse performance measurements used for effectiveness and efficiency, and for which actors.

Findings

Few empirical LML studies exist examining coordination between key actors or on system level. Most studies focus on logistic performance measurements for retailers and/or consumers, not producers. Key goals and resource utilisations lack research, including all key actors and system-level coordination.

Research limitations/implications

Current LML performance research implies a risk for sub-optimisation. Through expanding on efficiency and effectiveness interplay at system level and introducing new research perspectives, the review highlights the need to revaluate single-actor, single-measurement studies.

Practical implications

No established scientific guidelines exist for solving LML optimisation in the grocery industry. For managers, it is important to thoroughly consider efficiency and effectiveness in LML execution, coordination and collaboration among key actors, avoiding sub-optimisations for business and sustainability.

Originality/value

The study contributes to current knowledge by reviewing empirical research on LML performance in the grocery sector, showing how previous research disregards the importance of multiple actors and coordination of actors, efficiency and effectiveness.

The article can be accessed here.

Sammanfattning

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