Antonella La Rocca – författare

This book offers a novel perspective on starting-up new business ventures through examining the process by which they become part of the existing business environment. The book highlights the importance of inter-organizational business relationships. Asserting that new ventures need to interact and connect with customers and suppliers, alongside policy actors and universities, Starting up in Business Networks demonstrates how beginning a new venture demands initiating and developing business relationships. Noting a lack of prior research into the process by which start-ups embed into an existing business network, this book presents examples from countries such as Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands and China to analyse the emergence and evolution of start-up business networks.

This book explores customer-supplier relationships in B2B markets focusing on interaction between parties. Drawing on three fields of research – studies of relationships in marketing, social interactionism in sociology, and sense-making in social psychology – the author explores the concepts and roles of actors in business relationships and how the behaviour of actors within an interaction affects the development of those relationships.

Based on a review of prior research and an original empirical study, the author argues that the presence of continuous close relationships between the customer and supplier organisations bestows features of a business network on B2B markets, with distinct interdependencies and ubiquitous interactions. Exploring buyer-seller interactions, the author contends that actors’ mutually perceived identities – continuously emergent and relationship-specific – are the main factor in the development of business relationships and discusses the implicationsfor management practice and research.