Transformations  in
Business & Economics

STRATEGIC ORIENTATIONS OF THE NETWORK BUSINESS MODELS
Szymon Mazurek

ABSTRACT. Progressive globalisation and the rapidly developing information and telecommunication technologies drive the development of entrepreneurship and business activities that are based on the network structures. The purpose of this article is to present the methods of using the networks in business models (crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, network orchestrators and others) in the light of the concepts of the strategic orientations and propose a new theoretical framework for the analysis those business models. The central part of this paper presents a two-dimensional classification of the network business models, which comprises seven strategic network orientations: active/passive sourcing, active/passive distribution, active/passive participation and active formation. This systematization covers the whole spectrum of activities, which the companies may take in connection with the network structures. The classification proposed in this article has been confronted with other, universal classifications of the strategic orientations frequently quoted in the literature (Venkatraman, Miles and Snow and other authors), which converge with the proposed network use system only to a minor extent.

KEYWORDS:  networks, strategic orientation, network analysis, crowdsourcing.

JEL classification:  D26, D85, L14, L22, M13, M21.