ABSTRACT
The purpose of this research is to contribute to the understanding of product develop-
ment processes within dispersed business-to-business networks that involve business
actors in China. This research investigates how these processes initiate and evolve in a
dynamic environment. More specifically, it examines the impact of culture in terms of
interpersonal interactive relationships on the formation and development of product
development processes. It investigates what is in the shadow of direct resource inter-
face development and explains that an analysis of relationship processes in China can
be inspirational for theoretical developments.
The Actors-Resources-Activities (ARA) model of interaction (Hakansson & Snehota
1995) of the business network paradigm is employed to analyse relationship pat-
terns in low, medium and high-tech product development networks, in terms of actor
bonds, resource ties and activity links. Although analyses of the case studies show that
there seem to be difficulties for the ARA model to capture and interpret what is in the
‘shadow’ of direct business interaction processes in China, the main solution is drawn
from acknowledging the significance of both the business network and the guanxi
network approaches as parallel mechanisms or cross-cutting patterns of explaining
evolution of business relationships.
This research highlights how an Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) approach
can be useful to interpret interaction processes in China and argues that the business
network approach and IMP thinking, in general, can be enriched by accounting for the
empirical phenomenon of guanxi, which manifests in both business and non-business
interactive processes. Guanxi networks take on a new perspective as they are viewed
and analysed from a dynamic lens under product development contexts. In particular,
the emergence and refinement of the concept of guanxi as ‘process of interaction’ or
‘process of organization’ has been a crucial element in the development of IMP thinking.
Managerial lessons are drawn by analysing how actors’ interactions influence product
and technology co-creation, and how business actors nurture, develop and maintain
relationships in China. Findings show that non-business interactive processes at the
interpersonal network level influence significantly the formation of activity links, re-
source interfaces and actor bonds at the inter-organisational level. Hence, accounting
for non-business interaction and the socio-cultural features in nurturing, developing
and maintaining relationships offers a complimentary approach to contemporary busi-
ness network research practice.
