Abstract
The concept of ecosystem emanates from ecology and subsequently has been broadly used in business studies to describe and investigate complex interrelationships between companies and other organizations. However, it is widely known that borrowing constructs from natural sciences to social sciences, or vice versa, can be problematic. For example, the use of the ecosystem concept outside its original domain has received criticism. To better understand the essence, applicability and boundaries of the business ecosystem concept, this study conducts a conceptual analysis of a set of concepts used to describe business networks. To this end, we analytically comparing business ecosystem with other prominent concepts, namely industry, population, cluster, inter-organizational network and value network. We then present an illustrative case of an emerging business ecosystem of digital services for real-estate and facility services and scrutinize the applicability of the focal concepts for our case. The results indicate a need for increased conceptual clarity when describing business networks. The results indicate a need for conceptual clarity when describing business networks. We conclude with a synthesis and discuss under what circumstances using the business ecosystem concept may add value for research and practice. The paper contributes to the business ecosystem literature by clarifying the similarities and differences between business ecosystem and other concepts used to describe business networks.
Highlights
The term ecosystem has diffused outside its original domain in natural sciences (Autio & Thomas 2014; Mäntymäki & Salmela 2017)
We focus on five widely discussed concepts that have been used to describe business networks, i.e. groups of inter-connected organizations, namely industry, population, inter-organizational network, cluster and value network
Based on our analysis we argue that concepts industry and population emphasize competitive relationships between firms, whereas an inter-organizational network and a cluster place more emphasis on collaboration
Summary
The term ecosystem has diffused outside its original domain in natural sciences (Autio & Thomas 2014; Mäntymäki & Salmela 2017). Boulding (1956) holds that analysing tools, such as conceptualizations of organization need to be at the same level of the complexity with the phenomena in question To foster this element, we apply Turunen’s (2015) view of organizing which maintains that all conceptualization of are embedded in organizational consciousness which we take along in this paper. Based on our analysis we argue that concepts industry and population emphasize competitive relationships between firms, whereas an inter-organizational network and a cluster place more emphasis on collaboration In this respect, an ecosystem is a more diverse concept, presuming both collaborative and competitive relationships, which generate intertwined awareness processes such as collective consciousness (Turunen, 2015), which draws on social sciences, from psychology and sociology. The paper concludes with a synthesis of the analysis and suggestion for future research
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