Missing Theory and Future Directions Judy M. Zolkiewski Manchester Business School University of Manchester, Booth Street West, Manchester, M15 6PB, UK. Judy.Zolkiewski@manchester.ac.uk Peter W. Turnbull The Birmingham Business School Keywords: strategic dynamics Abstract There can be absolutely no doubt that the research of the IMP group has radically transformed the understanding of business-to-business marketing and purchasing. The proposal of the interaction approach (Turnbull and Cunningham, 1981, Håkansson, 1982) has to be recognized as a paradigm shift in the field of business-to-business marketing. The focus that this approach places on the dyad can be seen as a limitation along with the static vision of a relationship implied by the interaction model diagram. Although it is actually implicit that the nature of the approach is based upon episodic interactions and that time is implicit in the model. However, it is also recognized that dyads do not exist in isolation and the maturity of the theoretical approach has come with the burgeoning discussion of the industrial network or Actor-Resource-Activity (ARA) approach (Håkansson and Johanson, 1988, Håkansson and Snehota, 1989. 1995, Axelsson and Easton, 1992). It can be suggested that the evolution of the interaction approach into the network approach leaves some unanswered questions. It can be further suggested that it is because of the lack of answers to these questions that models or approaches to network strategy become very difficult to devise. One such question is how the dynamics of the interaction parameters of environment and atmosphere (which may be considered as key strategic analysis variables) fit into the ARA approach. Obviously, there is some element of atmosphere in the actors’ bonds, which lead to the web of actors, and, additionally, there is also some element of atmosphere in the different dimensions to the network that are proposed, particularly the functional dimension. Other questions relate to the consideration of temporality (see Easton and Araujo, 1994, Ford and Håkansson, 2006, for instance). In order to allow our research to develop further and to provide insight for managers, these factors need to be made more explicit and longitudinal data sets need to be collected to provide supporting evidence. In this paper we develop our ideas about how some of these issues may be addressed, particularly by thinking about levels and dimensions of analysis in a temporal context. This paper is designed to provoke debate and stimulate thinking in this area. Introduction The group of researchers affiliated with IMP have, over the last 30 years, given us innovative insight into business-to-business markets, they have moved from interaction to networks through portfolios providing new ways to interpret the business world and motivating many researchers and becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy by generating many successful relationships in an international research network. It can be suggested that their motivation for using the relationship analogy in business-to-business marketing and purchasing was, and is, that relationships are dynamic (change over time), interactive and involve more than one party. But we are concerned that we are striding forward without pausing to reflect, revisit and reconceptualize what has been done and achieved in light of the new and ever evolving contexts and situations companies are embedded within. How many literature