Managing The Relational Capabilities of Inter-Organizational Innovation Ecosystems: Empirical Investigations

The thesis tries to evaluate the relational dynamics of an inter-organizational business network relationship. To do this, first, a review of extant literature was employed, and results showed that the field is however emerging slowly and its widespread is largely dominated by scholars from the UK, US, and Italy amongst other countries, respectively. The result of the study also indicated there is a large concentration on the management of the innovation ecosystem was carried out than on other aspects (i.e., the network antecedents, and performance research) informing the agenda for future agenda. In the second paper, we conduct an empirical study case study design to investigate the development of the relational capabilities of local Italian SMEs business networks. The results of the study demonstrate critical determinants enabling the development of network relational capabilities. The findings also suggest that organizing for inter-firm engagement in a business network context, positively influenced network performance over time. For the third paper, an empirical study of institution-based trust-building in an inter-firm innovation ecosystem was investigated. Using a sample from SMEs relationships from KM region of The Gambia, results show that institutional trust-building practices (i.e., openness, reliability, similarity) significantly have a positive effect on innovation performance. Furthermore, the relational risk was found to significantly mediate the effects of trust in institutional openness, similarity, and reliability on the innovation performance of SMEs alliance. In addition to these findings, the study also established that institutional trust-building practices differ greatly by the size of the enterprise (small vs medium). Finally, the last chapter tries to examine the collaborative value practices of cause-based social entrepreneurship alliance. We investigate key drivers of value creation in such an alliance using a longitudinal case study design involving Italian businesses that make up this alliance. The study findings suggest that cause-based alliances differ from other business relationships due to the social mission of the alliance and the orientation of partners to a specific social cause. However, over time involved firm may pursue commercial interests. Our results provide one of the first studies on the emerging phenomenon of a cause-based social alliance. It contributes to the literature on social entrepreneurship and its intersection with inter-organizational business relationship literature. These findings inform and guide practitioners about the motivations and drivers of such alliances.