How do keystones govern their business ecosystems through resource orchestration?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-12-2021-0804 |
| Published date | 21 April 2022 |
| Date | 21 April 2022 |
| Pages | 1987-2011 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Data management systems,Knowledge management,Knowledge sharing,Management science & operations,Supply chain management,Supply chain information systems,Logistics,Quality management/systems |
| Author | Miao Cui,Wanling Li,Li Cui,Yibo Jia,Lin Wu |
How do keystones govern their
business ecosystems through
resource orchestration?
Miao Cui and Wanling Li
School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology,
Dalian, China
Li Cui
School of Business, Dalian University of Technology, Panjin, China
Yibo Jia
School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology,
Dalian, China, and
Lin Wu
Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Abstract
Purpose –Sharing resources with stakeholders is the key for keystones to govern business ecosystems
successfully. However, existing research has not paid further attention to how keystones share resources under
the condition of resource sufficiency and how keystones balance resource sharing with complementors when
they lack resources. Therefore, this paper aims to explore how keystones govern their business ecosystems
under the conditions of resource sufficiency and resource insufficiency.
Design/methodology/approach –This paper adopts the single case study method. First, by adopting Gioia
coding to analyze the relevant data of the case sample, this paper obtains the key concepts of the business
ecosystem governance process. Then, it establishes the relationship between the concepts by analyzing the
governance process of the case sample.
Findings –Under the condition of resource sufficiency, keystones under the condition of resource sufficiency,
should make full use of resources to incubate more complementors, and further integrate the resources of the
business ecosystem, to create more value for their business ecosystems. Under the condition of resource
insufficiency,keystones should break the boundaries of business ecosystems and acquire external resources, to
meet the resource needs of complementors. Subsequently, keystones should redeploy idle resources according
to the actual needs of complementors, to meet the changing resource needs of complementors.
Originality/value–This study subdivides business ecosystem governance conditions and further constructs
the business ecosystem governance process model, which provides a theoretical and practical reference for
business ecosystem governance.
Keywords Business ecosystem governance, Resource condition, Resource orchestration
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
In recent years, the rapid development of information technology has prompted many firms
to interconnect and form a business ecosystem. A business ecosystem is an economic
community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals (Moore,
1996). It plays a critical role in helping stakeholders acquire complementary resources
(Adner, 2006;Mukhopadhyay and Bouwman, 2019), maintain a stable value network (Peltola
et al., 2016;Xu, 2019), reduce transaction costs (Williamson and De Meyer, 2012), and gain
Governing
business
ecosystems
1987
Funding: This research study is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71972023,
72102029), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (DUT20RW203, DUT21RW102)
and Liaoning Province Social Science Planning Fund Office (L19BSH003, 2022lslybkt-001).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0263-5577.htm
Received 31 December 2021
Revised 16 March 2022
Accepted 2 April 2022
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 122 No. 9, 2022
pp. 1987-2011
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-12-2021-0804
competitive advantages (Williamson and De Meyer, 2012;Rong et al., 2013). A keystone, as
the organizer of a business ecosystem, plays an important role in effectively governing the
business ecosystem and helping stakeholders obtain the above benefits (Pomegbe et al., 2021).
However, in practice, a large number of keystones, such as BlackBerry (Jacobides, 2013) and
LeEco, encountered failure in the governance process. It was a challenge for them to balance
resource sharing with complementors [1] (Adner and Kapoor, 2010;Milgrom and Roberts,
1990). Meanwhile, it is also a dilemma fo r any keystone to share resources with
complementors and keep resources within the organizational boundary to speed up its
own development.
Keystones play a critical role in maintaining the health of the business ecosystem by
effectively governing the balance of resource sharing between themselves and
complementors. By sharing resources with others, keystones are capable of attracting and
retaining complementary firms and resisting the aggression of other keystones (Wareham
et al., 2014;Valkokari, 2015;Mukhopadhyay and Bouwman, 2019). However, in practice, the
resource sharing of keystones is by no means an easy task, and two dilemmas will appear.
First, when keystones possess sufficient resources, how should keystones share resources to
help their business ecosystems create greater value? Second, when keystones lack resources,
they should share more resources with complementors to maintain a competitive advantage
or keep more resources to facilitate their own development (Mukhopadhyay and Bouwman,
2019). If the keystones fail to deal with resource constraints, it will directly lead to the
disappearance of business ecosystems (Wareham et al., 2014). To solve these dilemmas, it is
valuable to investigate how keystones govern business ecosystems when they lack resources
or possess sufficient resources.
In recent years, existing studies have paid attention to the importance of resource sharing
in business ecosystem governance (Huber et al., 2017;Colombo et al., 2019;Mukhopadhyay
and Bouwman, 2019). Stakeholders within the business ecosystem collaborate with each
other to obtain complementary resources (Moore, 1993), and keystones further promote
collaboration among stakeholders through resource sharing (Wulf and Butel, 2017). Some
scholars further pointed out in their research that resource sharing can support the
development of complementors (Mukhopadhyay and Bouwman, 2019), attract
complementors (Mukhopadhyay and Bouwman, 2019), acquire complementary innovation
(Adner, 2006), and realize value co-creation (Babu et al., 2020;Huang et al., 2020). However,
two issues remain unclear. The first is how keystones govern business ecosystems with
sufficient resources. The second is to extend the studies exploring how to govern business
ecosystems when keystones lack resources.
The resource orchestration perspective is suitable to examine how keystones govern their
business ecosystems under the conditions of resource sufficiency and resource insufficiency.
The resource orchestration perspective is a dynamic resource perspective that emphasizes
the role of managerial actions in utilizing resources to achieve strategic objectives (Sirmon
et al., 2011;Baert et al., 2016). First, the dynamic nature of the resource orchestration
perspective shows the dynamic process of business ecosystem governance. Then, the
resource orchestration perspective emphasizes the role of resource actions and resource
elements in gaining competitive advantages, which shows how keystones orchestrate the
resources of multiple organizations to overcome resource constraints and gain competitive
advantages. Therefore, we try to answer the question, “How do keystones govern their
business ecosystems through resource orche stration under the conditions of resource
sufficiency and resource insufficiency?”.
To answer the research question, this study adopts a single case study strategy by
analyzing the governance process of the Alpha Group (Alpha) business ecosystem.
Meanwhile, this study benefits both academics and practitioners in business ecosystem
governance. Theoretically, this paper subdivides the resource conditions of business
IMDS
122,9
1988
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