• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.77
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• pp.305-327
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• 2018

Export Intermediaries engage in an exporter's side transaction with an importer's side, both of which are customers of these intermediaries. Therefore, dyadic perspectives implied in conventional theories of customer orientation should be revised to apply to a triadic relationship systemin indirect export settings. The present manuscript proposed that customer orientation of export intermediaries consists of total customer orientation toward both the exporter and importer sides and customer orientation asymmetry, which is customer orientation in favor of the exporter relative to the importer side, and examines the antecedents and outcomes of these orientations. It is posited that each side attention increases total customer orientation and customer orientation asymmetry toward exporters or importers. These positive effects would be weaker when importers and exporters interact directly versus indirectly and would be stronger when the offering prices vary versus remain stable during negotiations. Lastly, total customer orientation would increase export intermediaries' performance by itself and in interaction with customer attention. Nonetheless, orientation asymmetry would increase their outcomes in line with customer attention.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.1-27
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• 2015

This paper presents a knowledge-based view of platform-centered collaborations among multiple organizations. Studies of technological innovation and knowledge creation have broadened beyond their initial emphasis on internal development within an organization or simple exchange of ideas between two parties toward complex collaboration among many organizations at the level of platform-based knowledge ecosystems. Platforms serve as an interface between different groups of producers and consumers in a variety of multi-sided knowledge markets such as smartphone operating systems and video games industries. This study is an exploratory examination to offer theoretical understanding of how the organizational capabilities of platform leaders help expand a network of platform participants. The growth of platform participants is particularly important in the early stage of any platforms as the concept of network effects suggests that the platform with the largest number of participants will capture entire markets. Building upon organization studies and network economics theory on multisided markets, this paper focuses on the role of platform leaders in expanding platform-based collaboration. In our view, platform leaders develop varying levels of three organizational capabilities to discern quality of potential participants, to attract them to actually participate in collaboration, and to maintain long-term exchange relations in the ecosystem. We suggest that the capabilities of platform leaders will have a positive effect on the expansion of platform participants to secure network effects, and also examine several contextual factors that moderate the relationship between a platform leader's capacity and platform expansion.