Network Strategy

Research at the intersection of social networks and strategic management identifies a range of performance-enhancing network position advantages - access to partners, information, innovation, and resources - that are distributed differentially across network positions. While research indicates how network positions can be used to advantage, it says little about how these positions are established, sustained, and destroyed, and so we know little about the role of actors' strategic goals and self-interests in shaping network structures."Volume 25 of Advances in Strategic Management" aims to inspire a shift from discussions of network effects to network processes. Each chapter contributes to the crafting of a more dynamic view that increases our understanding of the origins, evolution and decay of network structures, positions and their associated advantages.

Joel A. C. Baum is Canadian National Chair in Strategy and Organization at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. His research has been published in a wide range of prestigious management and social science journals. He is a member of the editorial boards of "Administrative Science Quarterly" and "Academy"" of ""Management Journal," Editor-in-Chief of "Advances in Strategic Management," and founding co-editor of "Strategic Organization - SO!."