Week 3

Question 1

What is a network?

Answer 1

• A structure of ties among actors
  
  • Actors: roles, individuals, organizations, industries, etc
  • Ties can be based on anything that generates relationships, e.g., business conversations, authority or economic exchanges.

Question 2

What is a corporate network?

Answer 2

• Corporate network
  
  • A long-term arrangement among distinct but related for-profit organizations
  • Virtual partnership
    
    • Operate as integral elements of a greater organization
    • Retain their own authority in major budgeting and pricing matters

Question 3

What is a fluid organization?

Answer 3

• is a networked enterprise that allows reorganization on the fly, depending on the innovation challenge and task at hand.

Question 4

What are the desirable features of inter-company networks?

Answer 4

• consist of nodes and relations
  
  • Nodes: independent organizations that participate
  • Relationships: between these participants, based on exchanges of goods, information, and knowledge;
• manage interdependence between companies
  
  • Differ from mergers collecting organizations into a single company
  • Based on purposeful collaboration and specific communication patterns;
• vary with respect to goals, boundaries, structures, processes and other attributes.

Question 5

Networked organizations exhibit the following characteristics:

Answer 5

• the links between network participants are based on various types of exchange (e.g. economic goods, money, information and knowledge);
• networks have a distinct boundary with their environments;
• network participants pursue a common goal;
• business collaboration - outsourcing, insourcing, rightsourcing;
• all network participants have nevertheless their own diverse, specific goals too;
• networks consist of relations characterized by mutual investments or interdependences, i.e., not just simple transactional links.

Question 6

What are the 2 types of network between independent companies?

Answer 6

• Stable networks
  
  • Long term, stable relations between limited number of selected suppliers, producers and distributors.
  • Designed to service mostly predictable markets by linking specialized organizations along given products or service value chains.
  • Partial outsourcing, strive to introduce flexibility into the overall value chain
• Dynamic networks
  
  • Temporary alliances between organizations in order to respond to actual market focuses.

Question 7

What are the 2 network types on the basis of network structure?

Answer 7

• Tightly coupled networks
  
  • Relatively stable networks of trading partners with shared planning and control cycles.
  • This entails organizing business activities along a virtual value chain to attain a shared goal.
  • They may involve predefined interaction patterns, such as trading protocols requiring detailed agreements on cross-organizational business processes.
• Loosely coupled networks
  
  • Independent trading partners who can
    
    1. unilaterally decide to change their internal business processes and information systems
    2. without influencing one another to the extent that the collaboration is disabled

Question 8

What are the advantages of networked organizations?

Answer 8

• Reduction of total costs
• Reduction of inventory
• Improved fulfillment cycle time
• Productivity increase
• Improved capacity
• Avoidance of problems of effort duplication & inefficiency
• Increase of intellectual assets
• Delivery improvement
• Diversified business and trading
• Competitive advantage
• Untapped markets
• Enhanced speed and efficiency

Question 9

What is an integrated supply chain

Answer 9

• Integrated supply chains
  
  • Multiple enterprises within a shared market segment
  • Collaboratively plan, implement and monitor the flow of goods, services & information
  • Aim to increase customer-perceived value and optimize efficiency
• Integrated supply chains features
  
  • Processes transcend the boundaries of a single form and are not controlled by a single organization
  • Production processes are flexible with different parties involved at different times
  • Parties involved in producing a single product are often geographically dispersed
  • Coordination is heavily dependent on IT infrastructure & telecommunications networks
• Benefits
  
  • Reduced inventories, cost savings, improved goods & services, tighter links with business partners