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The Emergence of the Business Network Approach

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Extending the Business Network Approach

Abstract

Relationships between commercial actors have existed for thousands of years as highlighted by Hadjikhani and LaPlaca (2013) and Hadjikhani in the final chapter of this volume. However, research on relationships between business actors, often summarised under headings such as industrial marketing or B2B, has a more recent origin. In the words of Hadjikhani and LaPlaca (2013: 294), relationship research ‘existed in society but had little scientific identity or inquiry’. This is even truer for research on wider relationship systems, that is, business networks. However, as will be demonstrated in the present volume, the situation in the beginning of the twenty-first century is quite different. Research on business networks is lively and manifested by a large number of publications. A search for ‘business networks’ in the databases SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI and A&HCI for all years until 2015 (with the restriction that the journals publishing the papers should be classified in the Subject Category ‘Business & Economics’ in all 156 journals) resulted in 553 hits, with the first papers published in 1992. Publications then did not accelerate until the early twenty-first century with an all-time high in 2012 of 70 hits, and somewhat lower figures in the following years. However, it should be noted that the 2015 figures merely refer to the first part of the year (Fig. 2.1) and will increase.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The search was made on 10 September 2015, in Web of Science (SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI), for the years 1945–2015 in the advanced search mode using TS = (“Business network*”) AND SU = (Business & Economics) AND DT = (Article OR Review). This approach favours precision since the number of hits compared to a broader search is delimited.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Lars Engwall & Olle Persson

  2. Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Cecilia Pahlberg

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  1. Lars Engwall
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  2. Cecilia Pahlberg
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Peter Thilenius

  2. Department of Business Studies, University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden

    Cecilia Pahlberg

  3. Department of Business Studies, University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden

    Virpi Havila

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Engwall, L., Pahlberg, C., Persson, O. (2016). The Emergence of the Business Network Approach. In: Thilenius, P., Pahlberg, C., Havila, V. (eds) Extending the Business Network Approach. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53765-2_2

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