Striving for network power: The perspective of solution integrators and suppliers

This paper explores how companies in complex networks strive for inter-organizational power. Solution provision was chosen as the empirical context because of its highly networked nature and the complex power relationships within the networks. We raise the level of analysis from buyer-supplier dyads to a network involving solution integrators, their suppliers, and the users of their respective solutions. Our findings demonstrated that the integrators and suppliers take action to shape their power sources on three different levels. In contrast to the literature regarding solution provision, our findings from the analysis of six embedded cases indicate that suppliers can also achieve structurally powerful network positions by skillfully focusing their development efforts on fostering the complementarities of power sources. In addition, our study indicates that integrators may find it notably challenging to achieve power over their suppliers by creating better access to customer information.