Network Pictures Research Articles

The roles of key suppliers in network formation when reshoring

Purpose Reshoring implies the reconfiguration of supply networks. Focusing on the specific case of a born-offshored firm that engaged in reshoring of outsourced activities, this study aims to analyse how initial key suppliers in the home country can help the reshoring firm to organize a new supply network. Design/methodology/approach The research is qualitative and based on a single exploratory case study. The data was collected from multiple primary and secondary sources, and using different techniques, such as in-depth interviews, direct observation and network pictures. Findings The study provides insights on how an initial key supplier can enable its customers’ reshoring in the home country. Specifically, the authors identify 10 roles played by a key supplier. The results also identify supply network formation as an essential component of the reshoring process. Originality/value This paper provides unique contributions. Firstly, it presents the specific and under-explored case of a born-offshored firm engaged in outsourced reshoring; secondly, it sheds light on the roles that key suppliers may play for the reshoring process; thirdly, it explores the formation of business relationships in the context of reshoring. In essence, the paper contributes to the reshoring literature, by stressing the importance of supply network formation in the reshoring process and by identifying the multiplicity of roles that key suppliers can play when implementing reshoring, and to the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) literature, by showing how relationships and networks develop during reshoring, a phenomenon so far understudied by IMP scholars.

The influence of network understanding on value creation in business relationships

PurposeThis study aims to investigate how companies’ understanding of the business network influences the creation of value in business-to-business relationships. The authors do this by analysing dimensions in actors’ “network pictures” and illustrating how value perception and network understanding influence actors’ mutual effort to create value. Approaching relationship value from the point of actors’ cognitive understanding of their business network has so far been largely overlooked in relationship value research.Design/methodology/approachThis study applies a qualitative case study methodology whereby dyadic data from a well-established business-to-business relationship is collected from 18 company representatives through personal interviews and group interviews supplemented by participant observations and company data.FindingsThe findings contribute with new insight into how companies’ understanding of their surrounding network influence (facilitates or limits) relationship value creation. The authors find that companies continuously reflect on changes in their networks and the related changes in partners’ value perceptions. Through value articulations, companies seek to explicitly express their value perception. Value reflections and value articulations create a dynamic process formed not only by the individual actor but also through their relationship and engagement in their network environment. This requires companies to develop their networking capabilities.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper presents findings, insights and contributions limited to a case study of a particular business relationship within an industrial setting. Although the findings and contributions are valid and in line with the criteria for rigorous qualitative research, the authors advocate and call for additional studies that investigate relationships value creation and address the interplay between actors’ network understanding and their actions and behaviour. One way to approach this would be to test the four propositions derived and presented as part of the present study.Practical implicationsThe findings imply that management needs to be aware not only of the value created and delivered to a specific partner but also of how the partner’s understanding of the wider network will influence the value delivering and capturing process.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the growing literature on relationship value creation by outlining a dynamic process where relationship partners reflect upon and articulate value. Such activities are influenced by the partners’ network understanding and form the basis of the mutual relationship value creation effort. The findings also contribute to the network pictures literature by emphasizing insights into the formation of value perceptions through actors’ understanding of their surrounding networks.

Alterations in Coronary Resistance Artery Network Geometry in Diabetes and the Role of Tenascin C.

Geometrical alterations in the coronary resistance artery network and the potential involvement of Tenascin C (TNC) extracellular matrix protein were investigated in diabetic and control mice. Diabetes was induced by streptozotocin (STZ) injections (n = 7-11 animals in each group) in Tenascin C KO (TNC KO) mice and their Wild type (A/J) littermates. After 16-18 weeks the heart was removed and the whole subsurface network of the left coronary artery was prepared (down to branches of 40 m outer diameter), in situ pressure-perfused and studied using video-microscopy. Outer and inner diameters, wall thicknesses and bifurcation angles were measured on whole network pictures reconstructed into collages at 1.7 m pixel resolutions. Diabetes induced abnormal morphological alterations including trifurcations, sharp bends of larger branches, and branches directed retrogradely (p 0.001 by the 2 test). Networks of TNC KO mice tended to form early divisions producing parallelly running larger branches (p 0.001 by the 2 probe). Networks of coronary resistance arteries were substantially more abundant in 100-180 m components, appearing in 2-5 mm flow distance from orifice in diabetes. This was accompanied by thickening of the wall of larger arterioles ( 220 m) and thinning of the wall of smaller (100-140 m) arterioles (p 0.001). Blood flow should cover larger distances in diabetic networks, but interestingly STZ-induced diabetes did not generate further geometrical changes in TNC KO mice. Diabetes promotes hypertrophic and hypotrophic vascular remodeling and induces vasculogenesis at well defined, specific positions of the coronary vasculature. TNC plays a pivotal role in the formation of coronary network geometry, and TNC deletion causes parallel fragmentation preventing diabetes-induced abnormal vascular morphologies.

Modeling Social Network of Professional Sports Athletes Based on Machine Learning Algorithms

With the progress of society and the development of science, the competition of competitive sports has become extremely fierce, and the talents of competitive sports have gradually shown their strong vitality. Elite athletes are an important group for the development of China’s competitive sports industry. To continue to progress and develop, it is inseparable from the careful training of elite athletes. In order to closely integrate the needs of China’s socialist modernization and the training of elite athletes, sports schools that focus on cultivating elite athletes need to strengthen their sense of urgency and mission. It is necessary to meet new challenges at the height of social development and constantly optimize the construction of the curriculum system and the reform of the teaching operation mechanism. The discussion and research of the current elite athlete’s talent training model has become a real problem faced by sports colleges, education departments, and sports departments. This paper conducts an experiment on the modeling of the sports athlete’s social network based on machine learning, and the experimental data are shown as follows: among the athlete social network pictures optimized by machine learning, there are 1,200 male athletes, accounting for 48%, and 1,000 female athletes, accounting for 40%. Before the optimization, male athletes accounted for 70.58% and female athletes accounted for 16.3%, which was a decrease of 22.58% for male athletes and an increase of 23.7% for female athletes. From the above data, it can be seen that after the research on the social network of sports athletes through machine learning, it has a positive effect on the development of the social network of athletes.

Research on image classification algorithm based on depth residuals shrinkage network in Commercial Image Library

With the advent of the age of multimedia technology and image data, commercial image library services have emerged. We need to use image classification to parse into content that the computer can understand. But when recognizing image features for classification, image data will inevitably produce noise, so in order to make image classification more accurate, we need to remove information that is irrelevant to noise. The Deep Residual Shrinkage Network (DRSN) proposed in this paper can effectively denoise images, and then learn features to classify images. The Deep Residual Shrinkage Network (DRSN) combines the Deep Residual Network (ResNet) and the SENet commonly used in the attention mechanism, and adds a soft threshold function to it. The image data set used in this experiment was downloaded from Panorama Network and Baidu Pictures and then processed. In the experiment, noise was first manually added to the data set, and the deep residual network and the deep residual shrinkage network were used for comparison experiments. It is concluded through experiments that the improved DRSN network has higher accuracy when applied to image classification.

Managers, Minds and Machines in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

This paper explores the connection between mental structures shaped by past events and managerial action targeted to manifest an uncertain future and does so in the light of artificial intelligence (AI). By drawing on predictive brain theory, the paper conceptualizes that prospective sensemaking is increasingly required for managers. To shed light on prospective sensemaking in uncertain times, we draw on the concept of network pictures to conceptualize managers’ sensemaking and consequent actions based on the notion of companies being embedded in a context (network) affecting strategies and their outcome. The network pictures managers form through sensemaking reflect the presence or the past, but what happens when we take the notion of a future that is inherently different from the past as the guiding light for present actions seriously? The paper contributes to research by extending the network picture concept and interlinking it with neuroscience and specifically AI as a motor of change, and as challenging the human thought with machine learning

Distributed and Mediated Ethos in a Mental Health Call Center

This pilot study of a mental health call center clinician’s workplace tools, processes, and organizational structures proposes a preliminary theory of “distributed and mediated ethos.” A distributed and mediated ethos refers to how an organization uses various resources—artifacts, technologies, and processes—situated across dis¬parate locations in order to expand and control their identity in the service of extend¬ing their reach and capacity to render essential services. An analysis of a participant clinician’s rhetorical context flowcharts and network pictures shows how an agency’s ethos is mediated through various technologies. Findings suggest that a distributed ethos (1) projects the impression of being “always there”; (2) relies on dexterity across several human and nonhuman actors; and (3) necessitates targeted tasks from branches that extend ethos farther from the organization. This pilot study, thus, provides researchers of rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) with a new tool for exploring the intricate and complex nature of health at a distance and other complicated 21st century healthcare delivery formats.

Image recognition technology based on cloud computing platform

The rapid development of computers makes people’s production and life rich and colorful, and people communicate with each other in the world of the Internet. The daily downloads and uploads of network pictures are countless. The existing image recognition technology alone cannot meet the currently required functions, so technology is needed to meet the retrieval requirements. The purpose of this paper is to study the image recognition technology based on the computer platform. This paper takes vehicle image recognition as an example. By performing a deblurring operation on the vehicle image, the edge detection method is used to separate the target vehicle image from the background, and the image is binary. Processing. Based on different eigenvalue categories, intelligent recognition of vehicle models is achieved through Bayesian classifiers. Collect experimental data through simulation experiments. Experimental data shows that after a certain number of nodes, the recognition efficiency is higher than the image recognition technology running on a stand-alone platform. The experimental data show that the image recognition technology based on a cloud computing platform is conducive to the development of image recognition technology. It can quickly solve the problems of traditional image detection systems in terms of computing efficiency and data processing ability, and has guiding significance for the development of image recognition technology.

Relacionamentos Interorganizacionais na Bioindústria Amazonense na Percepção dos Empresários

Resumo Diversas modalidades de relacionamentos foram adotadas nas reestruturações industriais como estratégia de sobrevivência e desenvolvimento das organizações. A bioindústria demanda parcerias dado o elevado investimento técnico-científico necessário, entretanto, dificuldades existem para concretizá-las no Brasil. Na Amazônia, onde a agregação de valor no uso dos recursos da sua biodiversidade tem elevada importância para o desenvolvimento sustentável regional, estudos apontam dificuldades de interação entre empresas da bioindústria, academia e governo. Compreender estas dificuldades motivou este estudo, que tem como objetivo analisar a percepção dos empresários acerca dos relacionamentos interorganizacionais na bioindústria amazonense. Realizou-se uma pesquisa qualitativa com treze empreendimentos cujos dados foram coletados utilizando network pictures, complementadas com entrevistas semiestruturadas. Ainda que relações de amizade, confiança, entre outros atributos, tenham sido identificados como os principais fatores relacionais e que a complementaridade de recursos seja o principal motivo das parcerias, os relacionamentos estão aquém do que se preconiza para afirmar a existência de uma rede de negócios. Estes resultados evidenciam também a necessidade proposições de ações estratégias para aproximação dos atores desta indústria.

Network myopia: An empirical study of network perception

The purpose of the paper is to examine the perception of network surroundings by managers. We scrutinize a random sample of 305 Polish logistics services firms in order to capture the managers' perception of direct and indirect relationships. We have identified a network myopia phenomenon, that is a narrow view of relevant actors and relationships in the firm's network environment. Our data suggest that managers rate vertical relationships along the supply chain much higher as compared to the value network, and direct relationships much higher as compared to indirect ones. We find support for the concern expressed in previous studies that managers may be narrowing the number and diversity of relevant actors to manageable levels, making their extended network largely invisible. We substantiate the gap arising from the managers' network perception insofar as exploiting the potential of network strategies is concerned. This may undermine the capability to see prospective partners, the benefits of establishing diverse relationships, and the opportunities embedded in networks. This study extends earlier research on network pictures by better understanding the views of network surroundings by involved actors.

Cloud Computing: Promoting Sharing of Resources among Educational Institutions

The era of technology has changed the way to impart education now days. Most of the developed as well as rapidly developing nations have now moved towards the innovative use of technology to make education less expensive and easily and equally accessible to all its citizens. But there are several obstacles come across the way providing the resources of knowledge to the common people with the help of technology. One of the important factors is the cost and the availability of modern hardware devices and software applications that comes as a hindrance in connecting people with technology. Internet is a wonderful innovation of this technological age which has proved its efficiency to connect people worldwide, for exchanging their opinions through social networking, blogging and various such activities. It is also rapidly used in providing access to education for various deprived sections of the society for free so that one of the very important millennium development goals of universalization of education can be made easily achievable. Internet has also innovate the concept of cloud computing which is rapidly attracting most of the people worldwide engaged in activities of spreading the resources of knowledge breaching the barrios of cost and availability of technical resources. Cloud computing is actually the result of getting more people on internet these days. People mostly access the internet through mobile devices, I-pads etc. Very often people would like to keep store their files like the word files, the power point files, pictures, videos etc. As you are aware of the storage capacity of these devices is much less to store a large amount of data on it. Cloud computing provides the option of storing the data on the cloud service provider's device with or without saving it on the clients own device as per their choice. At any time that saved data can be retrieved from the service provider's device to the user's device at any location and on any device just by having an internet connection. This is not the only feature of cloud computing. Cloud computing is the combination of the internet with outsourcing of the information technology. The education systems of many countries are not aware about the potential use of cloud computing in attaining its aims of providing various resources of knowledge to the whole world at a low cost, high quality in minimum time. A little number of them is utilizing it to its optimum level. To make the education world aware about the potential use of cloud computing we have to understand the concept first.WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING?The word cloud computing is the combination of two words; Cloud & Computing. To understand the concept we have to elaborate both the terms. In IT industry the word 'cloud' is used to denote a network and the user is mostly unknown to its internal setup as the internet service provider's network . But in network pictures and topology pictures the service provider's network is denoted by the shape of cloud. Next term is computing and it means to calculate. Performing calculations and processing data using computers is called computing. This data processing can be performed either on personal desktop or laptop or in office. In office also this computing can be performed on a single computer or on a centralized computer (server) or on both in distributed form according to the setup.To provide services in a network there may be a single server or a group of servers. According to the network size different systems may be allotted for storage and database. On these servers according to the need of consumers various services and applications may be available like mail.It means on these servers the client devices like computers and laptops are engaged in computing for using an application or services and network servers and other devices do computing to provide these mail and other such services. So the concept of cloud computing performed on cloud. …

A Network Pharmacology Approach to Explore the Pharmacological Mechanism of Xiaoyao Powder on Anovulatory Infertility.

Aim. To explore the pharmacological mechanism of Xiaoyao powder (XYP) on anovulatory infertility by a network pharmacology approach. Method. Collect XYP's active compounds by traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) databases, and input them into PharmMapper to get their targets. Then note these targets by Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and filter out targets that can be noted by human signal pathway. Get the information of modern pharmacology of active compounds and recipe's traditional effects through databases. Acquire infertility targets by Therapeutic Target Database (TTD). Collect the interactions of all the targets and other human proteins via String and INACT. Put all the targets into the Database for Annotation, Visualization, and Integrated Discovery (DAVID) to do GO enrichment analysis. Finally, draw the network by Cytoscape by the information above. Result. Six network pictures and two GO enrichment analysis pictures are visualized. Conclusion. According to this network pharmacology approach some signal pathways of XYP acting on infertility are found for the first time. Some biological processes can also be identified as XYP's effects on anovulatory infertility. We believe that evaluating the efficacy of TCM recipes and uncovering the pharmacological mechanism on a systematic level will be a significant method for future studies.

Inter-organizational cognitive structures: network conception in MobileTV case

Purpose – This paper aims to explore collective cognitive structures in business networks by analyzing the coherency of network pictures in a service development network. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use the network pictures construct as a tool to analyze collective cognitive structures in a service development network. The studied case and unit of analysis is a focal network developing a consumer mobile TV service. Findings – Based on the empirical evidence, the authors found that individuals’ cognitive structures vary extensively in the studied focal network. In addition, collective cognitive structures in intra- and inter-organizational settings differ, and thus should be distinguished. Research limitations/implications – The research findings are based on a single case study. This study is one of the first attempts to apply network pictures as a research device in industrial marketing. The concept of network conception is put forward, distinguishing intra- and inter-organizational levels of collective cognition. Practical implications – The employed conceptual tool is proposed for application also when forming a business network, where it is important to make all actors’ (i.e. persons and companies) perspectives on the emerging focal business network visible. Originality/value – To study the focal network-level collective cognitive structures further, the authors propose the concept of network conception to represent the phenomenon. The present study contributes to the research on collective cognitive structures in industrial marketing by extending understanding on individual- and organizational-level cognitions to a focal network-level collective cognition.

Sense-making in business markets – the interplay between cognition, action and outcomes

Business markets are characterized by interdependences between business actors. How these actors make sense of such interdependencies is a matter of both theoretical and practical importance. Research on cognitive foundations for competition in business markets, based on organization and strategic management, has evolved considerably since the 1980s. Also, researchers on business markets that are based on marketing and adopt a network perspective, have become increasingly interested in cognition and sense-making over the last two decades. The concepts network pictures and network understanding have been in focus for this research, which has resulted in a demand for improved clarity of the interplay between cognition, action and outcome, as well as for a stronger integration between parallel research developments from related disciplines and research approaches. A better understanding of how individual and collective views are developed is also required. This Special Issue, originated in the network perspective of business markets, is aimed to address these issues.

Beyond network pictures: Situational strategizing in network context

The present study combines industrial marketing and purchasing research on network pictures with a practice perspective of strategy research to examine strategizing by small firm managers in a network context. Network pictures are framed to function as a part of a situational mechanism of strategy formation, a dynamic process of emergence at the intersection of cognitive interpretation and network-embedded acting. The situational mechanism is presented and the theoretical framework further elaborated through a case study of three small software firms. As a result, the situational mechanism of strategy formation is discussed in relation to how small firm managers make sense of change in industrial networks and reflect it in the strategic activities of their firms.

The strategic assessment of networking of a higher education institution

The development of economy in the region is highly dependent on the effective management of higher education institutions (HEIs). The effective incorporation of networking in the strategies of HEIs is one of the core issues in the development of current HEIs. This incorporation raises two major issues: the lack of tools to monitor the progress of networking and the lack of ability to generate needed and network-related insights for strategy. The aim of this article is to suggest a networking assessment tool and to apply it empirically. This tool consists of multi-criteria evaluation and evaluation with network pictures. It adapts simple additive weighting (SAW) – data normalisation and Social Network Analysis methods (SNA). The empirical application of the tool showed the possibility to assess and monitor the institution’s networking performance and support strategising in the fields of research and studies.

Network process analysis: An event-based approach to study business network dynamics

To develop business, managers need to understand the dynamic nature of the business networks in which their company operates. Qualitative process research offers a promising methodology to deliver that understanding but does not yet provide elaborate analysis methods applicable to business network research. We therefore introduce an event based analysis strategy developed to study processes in business networks. Employing a longitudinal case on a paper trader's internationalization process in a network context as an experimental arena, we propose three tools for process analysis. First, a research steering wheel that combines both retrospective and real time event analysis; second, an analytical scheme comprising influencing factors, critical events and consequent change; and third, an event trajectory that unfolds process patterns. The proposed strategy offers a viable alternative to social network analysis, network pictures and narrative analysis with which to study network change and dynamics. Elaborating events from a moderate constructivist perspective, it enables the researcher to trace and understand processes beyond mere structural change, and to capture their evolution in a multilayered network context. We evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology and discuss its relevance for research and practice.

Fundamentals of visualizing communication networks

The human brain is built to process complex visual impressions within milliseconds. In comparison with sequentially coded spoken language and written texts, we are capable of consuming graphical information at a high bandwidth in a parallel fashion, producing a picture worth more than a thousand words. Effective information visualization can be a powerful tool to capture people's attention and quickly communicate large amounts of data and complex information. This is particularly important in the context of communication data, which often describes entities (people, organizations) and their connections through communication. Visual analytics approaches can optimize the user-computer interaction to gain insights into communication networks and learn about their structures. Network visualization is a perfect instrument to better communicate the results of analysis. The precondition for effective information visualization and successful visual reasoning is the capability to draw “good” pictures. Even though communication networks are often large, including thousands or even millions of people, underlying visualization principles are identical to those used for visualizing smaller networks. In this article, you will learn about these principles, giving you the ability to assess the quality of network visualizations and to draw better network pictures by yourself.

Network pictures for managing key supplier relationships

We contribute to key supplier management literature, emphasizing the buyer's insight into key suppliers' surrounding networks. We build on supply network research suggesting that buyers must manage their key suppliers in their network contexts, and research suggesting that managing in networks is based on the interacting parties' network pictures. The theoretical insights were systematically combined with a single-case study of a buyer and four key suppliers. We suggest that a buyer assess the congruence between the buyer's network picture of key suppliers and the key suppliers' own network pictures, paying attention to obsolete, incorrect, incomplete, or generic elements. Second, a buyer may consider five “rules for revision” that can reveal problems arising from the obsolete, incorrect, incomplete, and/or generic elements. Third, the buyer may uncover new opportunities in key suppliers' networks by pursuing four strategies: systematic search, systematic discovery, chance search, and chance discovery. Thereby, the buying company may revise its network picture and contemplate alternative actions and reactions toward key suppliers. Our findings have implications for key supplier managers and others who interact with key suppliers. Further research should investigate how a buyer's insight into key suppliers' networks affects the performance of the buying firm, and the key suppliers.

Achieving Online Relationship Marketing via Tourism Blogs: A Social Network Perspective

Drawing upon the literature on social network analysis, this research examines how part-time marketers use tourism blogs to conduct relationship marketing with their customers. The findings from an interpretive case study indicate that the network pictures of part-time blog marketers can be categorized into three distinct models: the “fan club,” the “compliance,” and the “creative outlet” models. Our findings also suggest that different network pictures lead to different network management strategies for blogs. Moreover, providing instrumental support and especially material support by blog marketers play significant roles in aggrandizing this transitivity, which helps to attract more visitors to blog sites. We believe that the innovation and the potential connections derived from the individualistic styles of some bloggers and the hedonic emotional support given to tourism blogs should not be overlooked. Our findings also indicate that more incentives and freedom should be provided to tourism business bloggers in order to prosper in their grassroots use of technology.