Multilateral interactions and leadership in corporate ecology: a multi-level analysis of ecosystem evolution

Abstract

Business and entrepreneurial ecosystems are widely used to explain innovation, digital transformation, and new forms of value creation, yet research remains fragmented across ecosystem types and levels of analysis. Existing studies have generated important insights into ecosystem emergence, evolution, governance, and orchestration. However, two issues require further clarification. First, while ecosystem research increasingly recognises the multi-actor and interdependent nature of ecosystem settings, the concept of multilateral interaction remains insufficiently unpacked. In particular, limited attention has been paid to what multilateral interaction means beyond the presence of multiple actors, how different types of multilateral interaction can be distinguished, and how these interaction types reflect firm-level responses to different ecosystem challenges, such as opportunity creation, resource mobilisation, actor coordination, conflict resolution, and adaptation to environmental change. Second, ecosystem leadership is often theorised at the organisational or platform level, while the micro-foundations—how individual leaders’ traits, cognition, and actions become consequential for ecosystem evolution—remain under-specified, particularly in emerging-economy contexts. This thesis addresses these issues by examining the meaning and types of multilateral interaction in business ecosystems and by explaining how firms and leaders shape the emergence, transformation, and governance of these interactions over time.

The thesis develops a coherent multi-level, process-oriented account in three connected steps. First, it consolidates the business-domain ecosystem literature through a systematic review of 108 journal articles across business, innovation, and entrepreneurial ecosystem research. This synthesis clarifies how ecosystem types are defined and operationalised. It then identifies three areas requiring further conceptual clarification: limited theorisation of multilateral (rather than dyadic) interactions, insufficient integration across macro–meso–micro levels, and weak specification of ecosystem leadership in emerging economies. Second, at the macro and meso levels, the thesis examines COSMOPlat as an industrial internet platform initiated and developed by Haier as the focal firm within its broader corporate ecology. Rather than treating COSMOPlat as equivalent to an entire ecosystem, the analysis traces how the platform enables and shapes interactions among heterogeneous actors—including users, complementors, partners, micro-enterprises, and public stakeholders—and how these interactions contribute to broader sub-ecosystem dynamics around value proposition evolution and value co-creation over time. Using longitudinal qualitative evidence and process analysis, it explains how ecosystem leaders design and adapt governance mechanisms, reconfigure roles and boundaries, and respond to environmental shocks in ways that reshape multilateral interaction patterns and sustain value co-creation. Third, at the micro level, the thesis investigates five entrepreneurial sub-ecosystems nested within Haier's corporate ecology. It shows how sub-ecosystem leaders' cognitive framing, normative work (e.g., legitimising collaboration norms and value-sharing expectations), and action pathways (e.g., implementing coordination routines and scaling mechanisms) translate into interaction strategies and governance choices that influence value proposition evolution and feedback into ecosystem-level outcomes.

Overall, the thesis develops an integrated process model of business ecosystem evolution that links macro-level structures, meso-level multilateral interaction configurations, and micro-level leadership mechanisms. It contributes to the field by treating multilateral interaction configurations as a central unit of analysis for explaining ecosystem evolution. The findings advance a multi-level account of ecosystem leadership that connects organisational governance with leader micro-foundations, and offers empirically grounded implications for managers and policy-makers seeking to build and sustain business ecosystems under conditions of uncertainty.

Date of Award	19 Jul 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Nottingham
Supervisor	Pingping Fu (Supervisor) & Haibo Zhou (Supervisor)