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Inertia in business relationships: the case of a designer furniture manufacturer
Abstract
This article discusses how inertia manifests itself in business relationships. It examines how path dependencies shape the development of a firm's resources and accumulate inertia within them, which can affect how the firm relates to other actors in its network. The article draws on different theoretical perspectives that have dealt with the notion of inertia and provides a holistic understanding of this concept, its antecedents and forms of expression. The study uses a longitudinal single-case study of a company where a dominant business relationship has accumulated inertia and affected the firm's engagement in other relationships and development efforts as an empirical illustration. The analysis examines how change forces challenge the existing paths and reveal both positive and negative inertia effects. The article provides a discussion of the different types of inertia and its expressions on different levels and functions.
... Lessons from IMP literature (e.g. Norrgrann & Luokkanen-Rabetino, 2011) point to examining the relationship and network dynamics and the broader network effects of brands; if value becomes co-destructed in interaction, what can we learn of its implications for multi-stakeholder networks? We highlight that contradictions in business relationships need not necessarily have only negative implications but can later be reconfigured into more positive outcomes too. ...
... Different market actors' disharmonious and contradicting interests related to a brand may lead to new, creative reinterpretations of the brand meanings (Fyrberg Yngfalk, 2013). Similarly, while the resource structure around a brand can be seen as inert and limiting for some relationships, it can provide new value when coupled to new relationships and resources (Norrgrann & Luokkanen-Rabetino, 2011;Gidhagen & Havila, 2016). Surprisingly, such discrepancies in networks and business relationships that relate to brands have remained rather unstudied. ...
Brands become shaped by interaction processes in the networks in which they are embedded. Research addressing this phenomenon has departed both from a co-creation angle, and to some extent by examining co-destruction. In this chapter, we adopt a process-oriented multiple stakeholder view to brands and explore the concept of brand discrepancies, i.e. inconsistencies and disruptions that can prompt brand co-destruction and lead to a reconfiguration of meanings and value in the brand's ecosystem. The chapter presents a longitudinal case study from the context of food distribution to illustrate the ever-changing nature of brand reality. The findings add to the brand co-creation discussion by showing that brand co-destruction is not always negative, but the reconfiguration, recomposition, and reorchestration of brand meanings and value can also be seen as positive outcomes of brand discrepancies. These findings depict brand management as a process of orchestration in a multi-stakeholder setting, rather than as something conducted unilaterally by a brand governor.
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