Understanding how to effectively manage in business relationships has been a central topic for scholars in the area of business marketing (Ford et al. 2003a). An important aspect of this issue relates to the way managers make decisions and choose certain strategies to affect business relationships, and in particular their position in the surrounding business network (Gadde et al. 2003; Harrison et al. 2010; Baraldi et al. 2007). Such strategizing issues are often linked to how actors understand the particular network in which they are embedded (Holmen and Pedersen 2003). To grasp such aspects, research on sense-making in networks (e.g., using the concept of network pictures) has recently aimed at gaining insights into how managers perceive their surrounding business network and thereby underpins their understanding of their strategic options for managing in relationships as well as choices in complex systems (Ford et al. 2003b; Henneberg et al. 2006; Ramos and Ford 2011). According to Henneberg et al. (2006, p. 409),
展开▼