Orchestration capability: a bibliometric analysis

PurposeAs inter-company cooperation and competition grow, orchestration capability plays an increasingly important role. This paper aims to present an overview of orchestration capability in the business and management field, identify the current state and explore future research trends.Design/methodology/approachThis literature review is based on 132 papers collected from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection data (1997–March 2021). HistCite was used to analyze the year of publication, leading scholars, influential articles, key journals, top countries and institutions. Research streams were identified from analysis of co-citation, bibliographic coupling and keyword co-occurrence by HistCite and VOSviewer.FindingsThis paper finds that Hitt MA is the most prolific scholar, and the Strategic Management Journal is the most dominating publication among the orchestration capability publications. The USA and Texas A&M University are the most influential countries and institutions, respectively. Three major clusters are identified based on citation mapping, bibliographic coupling analysis of documents and keywords co-occurrence analysis: dynamic capability and resource-based view, resource orchestration and network orchestration. Based on the three clusters, the authors analyze how resource orchestration and network orchestration research develops over time and summarize the evolutionary path of orchestration capability literature.Research limitations/implicationsThis article builds on data from WoS Core Collection, and some new but important articles may not be analyzed, since bibliometrics consider high citation as an indicator to select influential articles.Practical implicationsWith the rapid development of the digital economy, the frequent interactions between companies pose many challenges for businesses. Enterprises can take orchestration actions effectively and efficiently from various perspectives and continuously improve their orchestration capabilities in collaboration with partners to achieve and sustain competitive advantages.Originality/valueThis paper provides a systematic review of orchestration capability using bibliometric analysis, which has not been employed in previous studies. Besides, this article presents a broad understanding of how scholars have researched the subject over the years.

Model-based Approach to Multi-domain Monitoring Data Aggregation

The essential propellant for any closed-loop management mechanism is data related to the managed entity. While this is a general evidence, it becomes even more true when dealing with advanced closed-loop systems like the ones supported by Artificial Intelligence (AI), as they require a trustworthy, up-to-date and steady flow of state data to be applicable. Modern network infrastructures provide a vast amount of disparate data sources, especially in the multi-domain scenarios considered by the ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG) Zero Touch Network and Service Management (ZSM) framework, and proper mechanisms for data aggregation, pre-processing and normalization are required to make possible AI-enabled closed-loop management. So far, solutions proposed for these data aggregation tasks have been specific to concrete data sources and consumers, following ad-hoc approaches unsuitable to address the vast heterogeneity of data sources and potential data consumers. This paper presents a model-based approach to a data aggregator framework, relying on standardized data models and telemetry protocols, and integrated with an open-source network orchestration stack to support their incorporation within network service lifecycles.

Network orchestration: new role of business incubators?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the performance of incubators in the stages of formation and development of incubated business networks, especially in bottom-up and top-down network models. Design/methodology/approach The research is defined as qualitative and descriptive, with the application of multiple case studies, in which two networks of incubated businesses were investigated, one being top-down and the other bottom-up, which emerged within the incubation process of two business incubators (CIETEC and INCIT). To make the study operational, 11 semi-structured interviews were carried out and the thematic analysis of content was developed. Findings The results pointed out that in the top-down network the incubator performs a new assignment, the network orchestration, which corresponds to the actions of formation, coordination and governance of the group. In the bottom-up network, it was found that the role of the incubator was to expand the value offers usually practiced. Research limitations/implications As a limitation of the research, the very limitation of case studies is pointed out that is they do not allow for generalizations. Practical implications The research contributes to reflections on the effectiveness of the incubator and sheds light on the complementarity of networks in incubation processes, providing gains for incubators, incubated businesses and society. Originality/value The originality of this document is the new role of the incubator, which is orchestration, and its categorization. The results allow us to understand the effects of providing networks and relationships for incubated businesses. In addition, this study broadens the focus of traditional analyses of the incubator–incubated duo to consider the incubator–network–incubated trio.