The Structures of Business Networks in Seniors' Housing Industry: A Case Study in Three European Countries

This paper studies structures of business networks in seniors' housing industry from a whole network perspective. The network structure consists of actors in the networks as well as exchange of tangibles and intangibles between the networked actors. Essential structural features are analyzed across cases by using visualization of network structures and case-ordered matrix displays. The essential features include centrality of actors, fragmentation and cliques,as well as density of the networks. Furthermore, conclusions are drawn concerning network governance. Data for the research were collected from four cases in Finland, Ireland and the Netherlands. The goal of the research is to discover which types of networks exist in seniors' housing industry as well as the roles of public-and private-sector actors in different networks. The study shows that business networks in seniors' housing industry are end-customer centralized and fragmented into housing and service networks. Besides that the end-customer is the most central actor in the network, it is the only significant connector between the two sub-networks. Central producers in the sub-networks are either public or non-profit actors. However, it was discovered that, no unambiguous lead organization governed network exist in seniors' housing industry. Moreover, the networks do not have structural holes which could potentially be exploited by actors neither between the sub-networks nor within them.