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Boundary spanner corruption-voluntary collaborative behavior between individuals representing different organizations that violates their organizations' norms-is a serious problem in business-to-business (B2B) marketing relationships. Drawing on insights from the literatures on the dark side of business relationships and deviance in sales and service organizations, the authors identify boundary spanner corruption as a potential dark side complication inherent in close B2B marketing relationships. The same elements that generate benefits in interorganizational relationships, such as those between customer and seller firms, also enable the development of boundary-spanning social cocoons that can foment corrupt activities under certain conditions. A conceptual framework illustrates how trust at the interpersonal, intraorganizational, and interorganizational levels enables corrupt behaviors by allowing deviance-inducing factors stemming from the task environment or from the individual boundary spanner to manifest in boundary spanner corruption. Interpersonal trust between representatives of different organizations, interorganizational trust between these organizations, and intraorganizational agency trust of management in their representatives foster the development of a boundary-spanning social cocoon-a microculture that can inculcate deviant norms leading to corrupt behavior. Boundary spanner corruption imposes direct and opportunity costs on the involved organizations, with the additional burden of latent financial risk associated with potential exposure. The authors substantiate their multi-level framework and propositions with field-based insights from qualitative interviews with senior executives. The multi-level framework of boundary spanner corruption extends beyond extant marketing literature, highlights intriguing directions for future research, and offers new managerial insights., Author(s): Sebastian Forkmann [sup.1] , Jonathan Webb [sup.2] , Stephan C. Henneberg [sup.2] , Lisa K. Scheer [sup.3] [sup.4] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.411015.0, 0000 0001 0727 7545, Culverhouse College of [...]

Salesperson face-to-face visits with buyer organizations are an inherently dynamic phenomenon and choreographing changes in those visits is important for a salesperson to identify and pursue sales opportunities. Drawing on social network theory and adopting a novel within-tie change perspective, we provide guidance regarding salesperson choreographing. We do so by focusing on how often a salesperson visits a buyer organization (i.e., change in visit intensity, visit intensity trend, duration of relations) and the functions a salesperson visits in a buyer organization (i.e., change in diversity of visited functions, change in visit concentration on top-management). Our model of salesperson choreographing is tested using data from 2934 salesperson-buyer organization relationships over seven consecutive sales periods. Random coefficient models illustrate the complex and nuanced interplay of various aspects of salesperson choreographing on sales with a buyer organization. The findings provide actionable guidance for salespeople to better manage the choreographing of limited visits., Author(s): Sebastian Forkmann [sup.1] , Ryan Mullins [sup.2] , Stephan C. Henneberg [sup.3] , Thomas L. Baker [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.411015.0, 0000 0001 0727 7545, Culverhouse College of Business, [...]

Despite the growing importance of servitization as a source of competitiveness for manufacturers, limited knowledge exists about organizational issues of servitization. Drawing on transaction cost economics theory and a configuration theoretical perspective, our study illuminates different organization architectures for servitization and how firms align such architectures with servitization approaches to achieve high financial performance. We analyze qualitative data based on interviews with 22 managers and quantitative data from a survey of 161 equipment manufacturers. The results indicate that manufacturers mostly opt for one of three organization architectures for servitization: internal product business unit, internal specialized service business unit, or external service provider. In addition, they reveal equifinal configurations of servitization characteristics to achieve high financial performance for each organization architecture. The internal specialized service business unit turns out as a flexible organization architecture to successfully provide smoothing, adapting, and substituting services. The use of an external service provider is less suited for the provision of adapting and substituting services, which require more knowledge specialization and coordination. All three organization architectures can be used to provide smoothing services. In summary, the results may serve as decision-making templates for aligning organization architecture, offering characteristics, and service provider integration to pursue servitization successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to show the role of social networks in mobilizing how actors both impact and are impacted on by their colleagues. It seeks to compare the human resource management (HRM) academic community with two other comparable communities, and to identify those groups that are seen to work closely together. Design/methodology/approach: It is shown how social network analysis (SNA) can be utilized to analyse data in social networks, shedding light on the cliques and networks of people that work together over a period of time. This is based on an analysis of co-authored papers in the field of HRM between 1990 and 2005. Findings: It is shown how the HRM community has developed over time utilizing various SNA metrics and this community of scholars is shown to be less "dense" than comparable academic networks, being made up of several weakly-linked subcomponents. The paper also identifies the "ego-nets" of individuals that are indicative of different publishing strategies. Originality/value: The paper's contribution lies in the application of SNA to identify how groups interact over time, and how a large network can be systematically analysed to reveal the underlying structure.