Developing and coordinating networks presents challenges, particularly when multiple organizations attempt to guide and lead the network simultaneously, potentially resulting in overlapping roles and conflicting priorities. Research has examined such lead organizations in business networks as orchestrators but has primarily focused on contexts involving a single orchestrator. Given many networks are not pre-designed around a central orchestrator, we need to better understand how multiple orchestrators interact through their governance practices and how these interactions shape network development. This study addresses this gap by exploring practice interactions in multiple-orchestrator networks, focusing on their influence in the early stages of network development. Using a multiple case study approach, we examine the practices employed by orchestrators in Australian fashion and textiles circular economy networks. A typology of practice interaction types is developed, illustrating how orchestrators engage in practices within the same network and how these interactions shape various orchestration dimensions. Findings highlight the complexities of multiple-orchestrator networks, demonstrating how coordinated and uncoordinated practices can act as benefits and drawbacks for network development. By identifying key interaction types and their effects, this study advances understanding of multiple-orchestrator networks and provides insights for orchestrators, policymakers, and industry stakeholders navigating these types of networks.

In this article, we examine the experiences of women digital entrepreneurs in navigating anticipated and experienced bias in venture capital and digital entrepreneurship ecosystems. Where prior research has focused primarily on evaluator-side bias and structural barriers, we develop the construct of anticipated bias as a socially produced cognitive filter, demonstrating how expectations of bias circulated through media, peer narratives, and academic discourse shape women's interpretations of interactions with investors and ecosystem actors. Anticipated and experienced bias interact recursively, forming a cyclical process that validates expectations and informs entrepreneurial behaviours. By theorising this recursive loop, we apply stigma consciousness theory to women digital entrepreneurship and suggest lower venture capital uptake is a strategic response to constraint rather than an ambition deficit. Providing empirically grounded accounts from women-founded startups, we counter celebratory narratives portraying digitalisation as a levelling force. Instead, we show how male-centred prototype and routinised practices of othering produce layered role incongruity, positioning women as outsiders.

Service research has typically treated technology as a tool directed by human actors to influence service systems; however, the rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) challenges this assumption and our understanding of service system transformations. Drawing on information systems (IS) research, we examine how GenAI's unique capabilities influence service system transformation mechanisms-particularly emergence and phase transitions-yielding three contributions to service research. First, we theorize how human-GenAI hybrids give rise to hybrid intelligence and influence transformation through unplanned, stabilized, and intelligent forms of delegation in service exchange, and through GenAI-enabled capacities of autoreflexivity and autoreformation. Second, we refine the understanding of service system transformation mechanisms by showing how the compound effects of first-order and fourth-order emergence explain the frequency of phase transitions, while heightened reflexivity and reformation influence their speed. Third, we extend service system design research by demonstrating how GenAI can enhance human reflexivity and reformation, challenging human-centric assumptions by positioning human-GenAI hybrids as contributors to service system design. We discuss how managers can strategically mobilize GenAI to influence markets and institutional arrangements. We conclude with future research directions addressing empirical, ethical, and design-oriented questions related to human-GenAI hybrids in service system transformation.

In capital-intensive and uncertain sectors like clean energy, governments are often viewed as initial market drivers, providing the necessary support for new technologies and infrastructure to stimulate change. Little is known about how firms and other stakeholders influence the market driver's role and activities in early-market formation. Drawing on a market shaping perspective, this study explores how actor visioning draws on competing frames to influence market shaping at the ‘fuzzy front-end’. We present a case study of the Australian clean hydrogen context, based on interviews with thirty-eight stakeholders and eighty-three policy and industry documents. We identify four key visioning contest areas which influence market shaping: developmental pace, resource allocation, market scope and governing purpose, each aligned with different sets of competing frames drawn upon by participants. Our findings make three contributions by conceptualising visioning as a distributed multi-actor process in market shaping; identifying how visioning leverages distinct, yet overlapping competing frames; and uncovering the discursive micro-foundations of market shaping to legitimise and promote preferred market configurations.

This research examines how managers interpret and enact an orchestrator-introduced strategic frame within an inter-organizational network. Rather than assuming uniform adoption, the findings identify a set of framing mechanisms—adoption, switching, assimilation, marginalization, rejection, misinterpretation, and advocacy — through which managers balance network coherence with organizational autonomy. These mechanisms correspond to four interpretation categories (acceptance, acknowledgment with or without embracing elements, and influence), showing that alignment unfolds along a continuum rather than through binary adoption or rejection. The research shows how network coherence emerges as dynamic coherence, developing through iterative interpretation rather than imposed consensus, as managers exercise episodic power to adapt the strategic frame within the boundaries of systemic power. In doing so, the paper extends framing and sensemaking research by explaining how coherence is constructed at the network level through manager-level framing mechanisms operating under conditions of power asymmetry in orchestrated networks, with relevance for both humanitarian and B2B settings.

Entrepreneurship is a critical driver of economic development, yet limited attention has been given to the role of work design in shaping entrepreneurial intentions, behaviors, and outcomes. Yet, literature at the nexus of work design and entrepreneurship is fragmented − and thus the evidence on the specific nature of these relationships is unclear. This systematic review investigates: how does work design shape entrepreneurial intention and entry? and how does founder work design shape individual and venture outcomes? Our integrative review identified four mechanisms that likely underlie the influence of work design on entrepreneurship—motivation, flexibility, capacity, and strain—and present them in a meta-framework to guide future research on how founders’ and employees’ work design emerges in start-ups, and how work design influences multilevel outcomes over time.

PurposeThis paper aims to examine why many producers of origin-bound products struggle to collectively drive increases in market value, despite shared interests. The authors apply a collaborative market driving (CMD) lens to the early stages of collective efforts, to identify the key motivators, visioning processes and explore why CMD can fail to initiate.Design/methodology/approachThe authors present a qualitative case study of the Western Australian monofloral honey industry. Data includes 64 producers' and distributors' online content and 30 interviews with stakeholders. Leximancer was used to map marketing communications, and participant narratives were thematically analysed using terroir and authenticity frameworks.FindingsStakeholders recognised the potential of terroir to support a shared, origin-based market vision. The authors found alignment between individual authenticity claims and collective terroir narratives. However, CMD efforts failed to initiate due to persistent barriers: financial instability, firm turnover, limited collaboration and conflicting priorities.Research limitations/implicationsFindings are based on a single case where CMD has not succeeded; future work should explore how these barriers may be overcome in other contexts.Practical implicationsThe authors outline four key barriers for initiating CMD: (i) dissensus; (ii) individualism; (iii) disconnection and (iv) inconsistency. The authors propose practical solutions to these barriers, which may motivate producers to initiate concerted action to pursue CMD more effectively, while opening up several future research opportunities.Originality/valueThis study uniquely explores CMD as a failed process, contributing a framework that combines terroir and authenticity to the development of collective market visions, while helping to explain the barrier which prevent tangible market driving action.

Investigating innovation ecosystems during their early stages of development is critical when considering how these nascent activities shape future technological direction and markets. This paper prospectively investigates how actors in these ecosystems discursively construct future markets, particularly when the past cannot be considered indictive of the future, as is the case of disruptive technologies, such as autonomous vehicles. An interpretative research approach is followed with discourse analysis that focused on discursive activities undertaken by our participants. A framework of symbolic actions conducted by ecosystem actors contributes to our understanding of activities undertaken at the fuzzy front end of innovation ecosystem emergence. This framework focuses on activities conducted at micro, meso and macro levels as participants prospectively construct future markets. Our findings highlight that future possible value propositions are embedded within market visions as participants position themselves and outline their roles in such future markets.

Despite firms' long reliance on geographic place origin branding, such as country-of-origin (COO), region-of-origin (ROO), and terroir, to sell their products in international markets, little theoretical and empirical work has been carried out to investigate which level of geographic specificity stimulates greater premium price when entering new markets. An experiment was conducted in India and Saudi Arabia manipulating place origin as a 3 factorial design (COO vs. ROO vs. terroir) using Australia as the country context, and honey as the product context. Results suggest that COO, ROO, and terroir prompt different place construal, which interacts with psychic distance to people (individual consumer difference), resulting in varying premium price. The study explains under which conditions which of the three place origins benefit companies and which ones backfire.

Purpose This study aims to examine the role relational dynamics, grounded in the theories of social exchange and social capital, play within the context of geographic indication (GI) food supply chain network (FSCN) performance. Design/methodology/approach A total of 30 qualitative interviews were undertaken with key informant stakeholders across a variety of organizations within Turkish GI FSCNs. An open, axial and selective grounded theory coding process was used for the analysis, teasing out critical themes that underpinned the conceptual framework. Findings The findings identify the formal and informal mechanisms which govern GI FSCNs. These two forms of governance mechanisms influence network performance, which was found to comprise logistics, production, business and socio-economic performance dimensions. Transparency, GI traceability, trust and psychological contract violations were found to mediate the link between governance and network performance outcomes. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore GI FSCNs from the perspective of relationship marketing and through the lens of social exchange and social capital theory. Accordingly, both academics and practitioners can benefit from the study, as it unveils relevant relational factors underpinning such networks.

While autonomous vehicle (AV) technology is forecast to widely disrupt transport systems, governments' roles in influencing this innovation have not been examined holistically. This empirical study analyses the perceptions of 34 professionals from government and non-government actors in the U.K. and Australia. Our findings identify three main categories of government roles: regulator, facilitator and participator and illustrate how different policy mechanisms align within this framework to shape AV innovation. The paper discusses the implications of the interrelationships between these roles within each context, as well as how governments can apply them to pursue transport policy goals. This research provides an important contribution to understanding how local policy environments around the world might shape the development and eventual implementation of AV technologies.

With the growing number of humanitarian aid crises and subsequent displacement of people around the world, research focusing on building resilience in aid networks is critical. The enduring nature of the Syrian War has not only devastated the country but significantly impacted countries hosting refugees, prompting the UN to consider novel resilience strategies within aid networks. Such networks often struggle with their need to rapidly respond to pressing crises, while concurrently having to meet longer term needs. Offensive resilience building ap-proaches, coupled with network orchestration mechanisms, can address these challenges through developing processes to transform aid networks from coping with immediate needs to focusing on humanitarian develop-ment outcomes. This paper addresses the important research gap of understanding network resilience by linking offensive resilience building processes (coping, transforming) with orchestration mechanisms which enable network transformation. Based on a cross-sectional case study, the paper investigates the humanitarian aid network responding to Syrian refugees within Jordan. Contributions include identifying five orchestration mechanisms (envisioning, planning, mobilizing resources, coordinating, and learning) which support network resilience building in three general transformative patterns: network integration; governance mode; and capacity and capability building.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the role of relational governance in innovation platform development, specifically investigating the context of living labs. Design/methodology/approach Two longitudinal case studies are presented, derived from auto-ethnographic narratives, qualitative interviews and secondary documents, which cover the critical stages in the development of each living lab. Findings Empirical insights demonstrate the relevance of coordination activities based on joint planning and activities to support innovation platform development across different stages. The governance role of research actors as platform activators is also identified. Practical implications The paper offers a useful perspective for identifying collective goals between living lab actors and aligning joint activities across different stages of living lab development. Social implications The case provides insights into the challenges and opportunities for collaboration between academia, industry and users to support sustainable construction innovation. Originality/value A relational governance mode is identified, going beyond top down or bottom up approaches, which contributes a new understanding of how collective goals align within a relational space.

Participation in open innovation networks presents challenges, as firms must recognize value before being willing to openly collaborate, yet opportunities typically cannot be realized without active engagement. Innovation intermediaries can address these tensions through orchestration mechanisms which create value at different levels of innovation networks. This paper addresses an important research gap by identifying the role of intermediaries in delivering open innovation activities across different levels and describing how these activities form interrelated orchestration mechanisms. A longitudinal case study follows the development of an open innovation network from inception, based on interviews and observations with participants including start-ups and large firms. Findings highlight how intermediary activities and practices align with orchestration mechanisms used simultaneously at different levels and create value for members. A multi-level analysis contributes to the open innovation literature by describing the interdependent nature of value creation within the innovation intermediary model.

Purpose This paper aims to examine how innovation intermediary activities increase relational proximity between start-ups and foreign partners to support start-up internationalization. Design/methodology/approach The paper applies a case study methodology to examine an international network of innovation intermediaries in the resources sector. Interviews were conducted with 59 start-ups, corporate and intermediary managers in four countries, supplemented by secondary data. A two-stage analysis process was performed to first identify activities relating to start-up internationalization and then apply a theoretically derived coding framework based on five proximity dimensions. Findings The case identifies several innovation intermediary activities, which facilitate relationship development between start-ups and partners in new markets. Findings outline how activities increase relational proximity across different dimensions, while also indicating a number of interrelations between dimensions, given the complexity of international business relationships. Originality/value This paper establishes interdisciplinary bridges between business networks, international business and economic geography perspectives. It provides a valuable empirical foundation for relational proximity, demonstrating its application to understanding start-up internationalization and its influence by intermediary-led activities.

Social impact bonds (SIBs) are strategic alliances aiming to generate financial profit through social innovation in the delivery of public social services. SIBs are also a product on the social impact investment market. There is little evidence for SIBs? effectiveness, and their ongoing international popularity partly rests on a theoretical premise that market mechanisms can effectively generate and diffuse social innovation. However, the literature contains no empirical consideration of whether and how this premise applies to public good social innovations. Our empirical study fills this gap by finding that public good social innovations are stimulated by market mechanisms, and markets are in turn shaped by these innovations. Despite this, public good social innovations eventually break away from markets in a micro-process we term ?schisming?. Through describing how and why schisming occurs, we make a unique contribution to existing knowledge of the micro-processes of concerned market shaping, and the extent to which economic markets and a concerned society are embedded within each other. Implications for practitioners seeking to bridge social innovation and economic markets include the need to be cognisant of how contextual, socially constructed concerns affect the potential and process of diffusing social innovations.

Existing public policy approaches to the social impact investment market take a linear view of both social innovation and economic markets. This article analyses the rhetoric of the market to explain both the persistence of a linear view and its inadequacy for dealing with the complexity of bridging social and financial goals. It then outlines complexity-sensitive theories of social innovation and economic markets and their import for social impact investing.

Many local and foreign companies operating in Australia are now establishing Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPs) to commit to and report on specific activities for engaging Indigenous stakeholders. While RAPs appear to align with existing approaches of sustainability reporting, these disclosure practices are yet to be empirically investigated within the broader context of CSR, or specifically the implications for stakeholder theory perspective. This paper examines RAP reporting practices over a thirteen year period, as well as how firms disclose reconciliation activities into their sustainability reporting and whether firms with RAPs disclose more 'reconciliation' activities than others. A content analysis is performed based on a sample of RAPs, sustainability reports and website data from companies operating in the Australian resources sector. Results indicate that firms do integrate reconciliation activities into their general sustainability reporting, however the quality of disclosure was in most cases low. The analysis also shows that on average, firms with RAPs do disclose reconciliation activities in greater detail than similar firms without. These findings provide a new empirical understanding embedded within theoretical perspectives of CSR, to support further integration of RAPs across industry and improve community impact.

There are currently limits in our understanding of strategic network performance due to the complexity of the underlying processes involved. Improving our understanding of performance is critical if we are to improve network functioning, an important managerial problem. This paper addresses a research gap in strategic network performance by investigating: efficiency and effectiveness at the network level of analysis. A multiple case study methodology is used to investigate two Australian agri-business strategic networks. The cases suggest that processes relating to building actor webs and collective sensemaking are crucial for improving strategic network effectiveness, whereas network efficiency is influenced by developing activity patterns and utilizing resource constellations. The cases also highlight potential trade-offs between network effectiveness and efficiency in relation to performance at the network level. The paper contributes an empirically informed theoretical framework for understanding how network level processes influence network performance.