Networkability of Organizations and Business Networks

Technological enablers such as interorganizational information systems (IOS) and business strategies such as supply chain management or virtual organizations facilitate the diffusion of business networks. The efficiency of joining and switching networks becomes an important competitive necessity and has been referred to as an organization’s networkability. Several researchers have already suggested performance measures which assess a company’s networking abilities regarding information systems, processes, people and the like. This perspective focuses on a specific organization and does not consider that networks might also differ in their abilities to integrate new partners. Business network performance has been introduced to address network processes and their characteristics. The following research aims to gather more evidence that supports the notion of a network’s networkability and which adds to the measurement of performance on the network level. Based on a survey of the relevant literature a framework for researching the relationship between organizational and network networkability is proposed and applied in two case examples, one being a network from the finance industry and the other a network from the computer retail industry.