A paper for the 18 th IMP Conference Dijon, France, September 5 th -7 th , 2002 Towards understanding interaction and resource development - The firm as a network buffer by Anna Dubois Department of Industrial Marketing Chalmers University of Technology S-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden Phone: +46 31 772 11 96 E-mail: andu@mot.chalmers.se Tim Torvatn Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management Norwegian University of Science and Technology N-7491 Trondheim, Norway Phone: +47 7359 3493 e-mail: torvatn@iot.ntnu.no Introduction While other theorists have elaborated on the definition of firms, industrial network researchers have rather focused on business relationships in industrial networks (see e.g. Axelsson and Easton 1992, Håkansson 1982, Håkansson and Snehota 1995). This focus may have different reasons. First, it has grown from recognition of the actual behaviour of firms who are often engaged in long term, closely collaborative relationships with one another (Johanson 1966). Since these relationships seem to contribute to the efficiency of the firms engaged in them (as opposed to seeing them as market imperfections), it seems fruitful to explore their features and effects. Second, it can be seen as a reaction against previous market theories where firms are described as independent units acting on 'atomistic' markets (Håkansson and Snehota 1