Knowledge, Transparency and Power in Business Networks

Abstract

This article explores into the relationship between food suppliers and supermarket-chain retailers in the concentrated and import protected Norwegian dairy market. It aims at developing and discussing analytical constructs to analyze “the dark side of networks” characteristics of such economic systems (Håkansson et al 2009). On the background of ongoing rivalry between the historic agrifood supply regime and the emerging integrated supermarket regime (Bush 2007, Konefal et al 2007), the paper presents and explores into three empirical sub-cases conceptualized as “power-games”. These are “The interdependent production-capacity game”, “The asymmetric mutual dependency game” and “The networked cost- and benefit distribution game”. The paper argues that to focus on power, knowledge and transparency is a useful approach to studies of transaction patterns and economic re-distribution effects across the interacting actors. It furthermore suggests that a potentially rewarding research route would be to move transaction patterns in complex interacted economies to the focus of further empirical investigation and theory development.