Aino Halinen-Kaila - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Aino Halinen-Kaila

Clearing the paradigmatic fog — how to move forward in business marketing research

Industrial Marketing Management, Apr 1, 2022

Clearing the paradigmatic fog: A rejoinder to responses

Industrial Marketing Management, Aug 1, 2023

Journal of Business Research, 2023

Visioning the future is an essential aspect of strategizing. However, how managers make sense of ... more Visioning the future is an essential aspect of strategizing. However, how managers make sense of their networked business environment, future changes in it, and how this visioning informs their interaction and networking has hardly been explored. Drawing on organizational foresight and business network research, we enhance the visioning concept by conducting an abductive qualitative case study on its role in business network strategizing. By comparing forward-looking and backward-looking perspectives of managers in companies within a particular business network, the study reveals what managers can foresee, what limits their visioning, and to what extent visioning informs network strategizing. Our findings suggest that visioning helps managers to openly contemplate the future, to envisage structural changes, detect probable trends, and form strategic intentions, but individual cognitive frameworks and network constraints limit their visioning. The study contributes to the current sensemaking view of network strategizing by proposing a conceptual model where visioning forms an important step in between reflection and networking, and by showing how managers consciously prepare for the future.

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Jul 25, 2023

Industrial Marketing Management, Feb 1, 2018

We have extensive knowledge about the thematic development of the business-to-business marketing ... more We have extensive knowledge about the thematic development of the business-to-business marketing research. Much less is known, however, how major research contributions are created and disseminated, in brief, how the academic value is constructed between human and institutional actors. We address this issue by examining the relationship between IMM (Industrial Marketing Management journal) and the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) research community in the creation of B2B marketing theory from the early 1990s to present. We argue that the relationship between the IMP community and IMM, led by Peter LaPlaca over the past 23 years, offers an exceptional living laboratory for studying academic value creation in the B2B domain. Based on documents and citation data from the late 1980s to 2016 we will show how the parties created new academic knowledge and value for each other through intensive interaction and collaborative activities. In conclusion, we discuss the forms of coordination between IMM and IMP and provide an outlook for the future of this unique relationship.

Relationship Marketing in Professional Services: A Study of Agency-Client Dynamics in the Advertising Sector

1. Introduction 2. The Research Setting 3. An Interaction Framework for the Development of Advert... more 1. Introduction 2. The Research Setting 3. An Interaction Framework for the Development of Advertising Agency-Client Relationships 4. Empirical Research Design 5. Development of the Advertising Agency-Client Relationship Studied 6. A Modified Process Model of Advertising Agency-Client Relationships 7. Assessment of the Study 8. Summary

Process Research in Business Networks – An Event-based Method for Qualitative Analysis

Customer participation management

Journal of Service Management, Jun 20, 2016

Purpose – Management of customer participation (CP) in service production and delivery is of crit... more Purpose – Management of customer participation (CP) in service production and delivery is of critical concern for service managers, as CP can result in various positive but also negative outcomes. However, an integrated understanding on how service providers can manage CP is still missing. The purpose of this paper is to gather and synthesize the extant knowledge on the constituents of CP management into a comprehensive framework, and to offer an extensive agenda for future research. Design/methodology/approach – A systematic literature review of existing research is conducted. A total of 181 journal articles are analyzed in five steps: attaining basic understanding, coding, categorization, comparison, and further analysis. Findings – The authors provide identification and categorizations of the customer inputs, their antecedents, the management approaches, and the outcomes of CP. To date, CP management has been addressed from three distinct perspectives: human resource management that treats customers as partial employees; operations management that focusses on customer functioning during the service process; and marketing that highlights the roles and value outcomes for customers. Research limitations/implications – The authors call for further research that addresses the relationships between the antecedents, customer inputs, management approaches, and outcomes of CP, and argue for extension of contextual diversity. The detailed research agenda provided is helpful for interested researchers. Practical implications – The study offers managerial insights on how the degree and quality of CP can be improved by applying the various management methods examined in academic research. Originality/value – As the first comprehensive review on this topic, this paper brings together the dispersed knowledge on CP, integrates it into a comprehensive framework of CP management, and paves the way for future focussed research.

The Role of Events in the Change of Business Networks – A Challenge for Strategy?

This paper takes its starting point in the so called business network approach, which is based on... more This paper takes its starting point in the so called business network approach, which is based on the notion that companies build exchange relationships with other companies; relationships that, in turn, are the building blocks of business networks. Through business relationships the companies become connected, both directly and indirectly, to other parts of the business network, for example, to customers’ customers and suppliers’ suppliers. The connectedness of relationships means that changes taking place in one part of the network may spread far into its other parts. The change of business networks has generally been discussed from the perspective of a focal company or a focal business relationship and of relationships directly connected to it. Usually indirect business relationships (e.g. with customers’ customers) are ignored. Thus, we still know very little of how change spreads further in business networks. Business network change is, however, a strategic concern for companies, who compete in networked environments and are increasingly dependent on external linkages as a source of resources. In this paper the purpose is to propose an event-based approach to the study of business network change. Events form the principal point of access to social action in time and can thus be used as windows for network dynamics. So far network change has been examined from the perspective of network structure, taking a defined network as a starting point, and studying the trajectory, change pattern or development process of the structure. We adopt an alternative approach here, taking the change itself as a starting point and selecting discernible change episodes, i.e. events, as the focus of our discussion. This offers a dynamic view on networks, and releases the investigator from strict ex ante limitation of the network in focus. Events are seen as manifestations of change forces causing various changes in business networks, ultimately leading to other important events. Events such as mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies are often connected to each other, creating event sequences that may restructure significantly the business network in which companies realize and enact their strategy. In the best case, events provide opportunities for firms to restructure the network and to improve their positions within it. However, our results pinpoint the complexity and dynamics of network environments and the challenge strategic management faces in such environments. In the context of merger and acquisition waves and various simultaneously occurring events, it may be extremely difficult to choose one’s own actions, and to see the long-term ramifications of one’s own and others’ actions.

Intersecting chains of events: Corporate acquisitions in an industry context

This paper takes its starting point in the literature dealing with "merger waves". A merger wave ... more This paper takes its starting point in the literature dealing with "merger waves". A merger wave basically denotes a period of time when an abnormal amount of mergers and acquisitions takes place. Such merger waves are usually described as occurring in cyclical patterns, and a number of them have been described over the last centuries. Merger waves are mostly studied as a macro level phenomenon, as an aggregate of mergers and acquisitions occurring over time within an industry or in the general business environment. A merger or an acquisition inevitably changes the type of linkages between the involved companies since two companies are consolidated to one or get the same owner. Furthermore, earlier studies show that a merger or an acquisition may change the involved companies" relationships to customers and suppliers, as well as to competitors and partners. However, what is lacking in the literature is a deeper understanding of how merger waves emerge (and evolve) through structural linkages between firms. Mergers and acquisitions are strategic decisions made at the micro-level, i.e. in companies, that potentially accumulate into merger waves and thereby become manifested at the macro-level. It is interesting to ask what happens in between these levels, in networks of inter-firm relationships, which ultimately mediate the emergence of merger waves. Therefore, in this paper we will examine acquiring companies" inter-firm linkages in order to shed light on the meso-level of merger waves.

Under the Surface of Merger Waves : The Role of Inter-firm Linkages

Rapport building in B2B sales interactions: the process and explananda

Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

Relationship Marketing: Its Disciplinary Roots and Future Directions

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2016

In this study we introduce ethics as an emerging area of business network research. Our aim is to... more In this study we introduce ethics as an emerging area of business network research. Our aim is to draw researchers' attention to ethics as a timely extension of the business network approach and to propose avenues for its future study. Business networks form a specific context for the study of ethics, yet only very little research has been conducted on the topic. Based on existing literature, we will first analyze the stands taken on defining ethics and ethical behavior in business relationships and networks. Secondly, we will address the significance of ethical behavior for business networks. To conclude, we derive four themes and a number of potential questions to be posed in future research on business network ethics. The study creates a contribution to the field of business networks by providing a state-of-theart examination of the research topic and by laying a basis for its future study.

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Oct 31, 2012

Diving into “merger waves”–An analysis of inter-firm linkages in acquisitions

Process Research in Business Networks: A Review of Longitudinal Research Methods

From Dyadic Changes to Changing Networks

12 Marketing in professional services firms: turning expertise into customer perceived value