Capabilities in business relationships and networks: Research recommendations and directions

Business relationships as well as the wider embedding network provide firms with crucial resources for their resource base, thus the capabilities that allow firms to successfully manage (in) such business relationships and networks have been an important research focus for industrial marketing. This article contends that there exist important opportunities for further knowledge generation with regard to capabilities in business relationships and networks, and our objective is to motivate and derive important research directions. The (already vast) literature is often not focused and requires rigor and direction in line with developments in research on (dynamic) capabilities in the strategy literature to remain impactful. Our aims are therefore: (i) To outline what the current state of knowledge is in the substantive literature relating to capabilities in business relationships and networks. Based on this we identify certain gaps that provide initial guidance regarding future research directions. (ii) To extensively review the current discussions regarding (dynamic) capability theory in the strategy literature. Based on this we derive recommendations from the foundational theory for research on capabilities in business relationships and networks. Bringing together the identified gaps in the substantive literature and the recommendations based on the developments in the foundational theory, we (iii) single out specific research directions in studying capabilities in business relationships and networks. We thereby contribute to the existing literature by providing a foundation for theory consensus creation as well as theory extension.