Understanding; Organisational Networking Behaviours in the Context of the UK Manufacturing Sector

This research adopts a network perspective and attempts to understand how firms ‘network’ beyond their directly connected relationships in the context of the UK manufacturing sector. It examines how firms utilise their webs of direct and indirect relationships in order to embrace the potential opportunities and barriers in the network. Through a qualitative empirical study, we identify four types of organisational networking behaviours: (1) information acquisition, (2) opportunity enabling, (3) strong-tie-approach and (4) weak-tie-approach resource mobilisation. Firms use these purposeful actions to cope with and capitalise on their complex network. This study demonstrates, besides other insights, that the notion of embeddedness in economic sociology has important implications in understanding organisational networking behaviours.