Network Orchestration: Vodafone’s Journey to Globalization

Abstract

This investigation provides an understanding of network orchestration as an impersonal, primordial driving force that challenges the view in organizational design that assigns human choice and deliberate intention a central role. The study highlights the importance of emerging strategy and the unintended consequence in bringing about a desirable outcome in MNCs’ efforts to coordinate and integrate globally dispersed capabilities. It is based on a longitudinal action research that embraces a period of transformational change between Vodafone and Ericsson to achieve cash synergies in mobile network operations globally. The findings indicate that enabling knowledge mobility, appropriating knowledge, and fostering network stability contribute to a successful economic performance as interactive, self-governing processes of network orchestration. Accordingly, we conclude that the processes of network orchestration must be understood as driven by choice sets taken while creatively coping with change rather than as primarily choice sets deliberately taken in the sequential pursuit of goals.

Citation

Saka-Helmhout, A. and Ibbott, C.J. (2014), "Network Orchestration: Vodafone’s Journey to Globalization", Orchestration of the Global Network Organization (Advances in International Management, Vol. 27), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 121-147. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1571-502720140000027003