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 organizationalambidexterity, we investigate the impact of structural characteristics of afirm’s whole buyer–supplier network: network density, betweennesscentralization, and average clustering coefficient on its international business(IB) performance. We also explore the moderating roles of average path lengthand PageRank centrality. Using a manually-collected dataset and a robustempirical methodology, we find that, while network density is negativelyrelated, betweenness centralization and average clustering coefficient have aninverted 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 totheir IB performance. We contribute to the international business and wholebuyer–supplier network literature.