Beyond the Relational View: Network Resources and Leadership in Multi-Stakeholder Collaborations

The growing prominence of networks as organizational forms for innovation raises questions concerning how to organize and manage effective collaboration between multiple, diverse stakeholders. Building on the relational view, we study the determinants underlying superior network performance in a multi-stakeholder innovation network consisting of 57 public and private organizations. We take a grounded theory approach and identify five types of network-level resources that underlie effective value creation as well as the corresponding leadership practices that support the mobilization of these resources. With these findings, we broaden and deepen the relational view to a multi-stakeholder view and offer a framework for achieving network competitive advantage in multi-stakeholder collaborations.