Understanding the structural characteristics of a firm’s whole buyer–supplier network and its impact on international business performance

Abstract

Building on the network theory and the concept of organizational ambidexterity, we investigate the impact of structural characteristics of a firm’s whole buyer–supplier network: network density, betweenness centralization, and average clustering coefficient on its international business (IB) performance. We also explore the moderating roles of average path length and PageRank centrality. Using a manually-collected dataset and a robust empirical methodology, we find that, while network density is negatively related, betweenness centralization and average clustering coefficient have an inverted U-shape and a U-shaped relationship with IB performance, respectively. We also find significant moderation effects, and, in the process, we show the economic importance of firms’ whole buyer–supplier network to their IB performance. We contribute to the international business and whole buyer–supplier network literature.