The roles of money and business deals in network structures

Abstract

In this article we attempt interpreting and conceptualizing the roles of monetary processes and business deals in relation to IMP methodology and theory. This suggests that we have to separate the way the money is handled. We point to the need to analyse the specific situations within which money is involved as “deals”. Each deal has its own history as it is a construction of two interacting firms that are influenced both by the joint social-material value creation processes and the specific features of monetary flows and appropriations of gains and losses that result from these interactions. The money distributive dimension should not be seen as a parallel activity layer of such business interactions - such as we may interpret accounting - but should be seen as a different, related network. We use a single case study to extract interpretations of different deals and deal-structures and use these to discuss the particularities of deals, their various roles and functions, and finally also how we may proceed to better study and theorize the roles of money in relation to IMP network theory.