How Specialised and Integrated Relationship Management Responsibilities Foster New Ventures' Network Development

Abstract

Even though developing a new venture’s network is recognized as a necessity for successfully developing a new venture, still little is known about how it may be effectively accomplished. Building on prior research, this paper develops and tests three hypotheses about how young ventures’ network development may benefit from specialising and integrating relationship management responsibilities. Our results, based on a sample of 117 young ventures, provide strong support for our hypotheses. They show that new ventures’ members that apply the basic means of organisation design to their management of external relations develop more new network relationships, dissolve more existing ones, and have larger networks in total.

Keywords: Networks, Network Development, Entrepreneurship, New Ventures, Specialisation, Integration