Fading eco‐benign networks: The causes found at Volvo Car Corporation and Ford Motor Company

Most research on greening of industry using a network approach has the firm as smallest unit of analysis. In addition, few have focused on technological regimes. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues through research on the firm‐internal network of two automotive firms, the actors, resources and activities of their networks, and how change initiatives in the firm forge and dissolve external networks of alternative regimes.

The case study is based on an insider/outsider research methodology. The specific issues of contextual and temporal boundaries in case research with a network approach were addressed through a relatively open‐ended process of inquiry during which these boundaries emerge and unfold. In terms of data collection, interviews with project team members in the two focal companies were conducted.

Failure or success is not only a matter of how the alternative regime fits into its cultural ambience in society and how successful that mutual adaptation is, but also equally of how it fits into the firm and the firm‐internal mutual adaptation. Particularly established companies may experience alternative regimes as threats to the established business, even when these regimes are developed inside the firm. In addition, the actors‐resources‐activities model reveals important resource dependencies between established technologies and the alternatives to them. Most likely, such dependencies constitute important complementary causes as to why eco‐ordering endeavors often fail.

The network approach having a mesh that goes into the firm reveals important factors to the outcome of eco‐ordering efforts. The actors‐resources‐activities analyzing tool helped find important non‐human resource dependencies.