Collaboration is considered an effective solution to improve business strategies. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) often lack common principles and common forms of contractual coordination. Several policies implemented by the EU have addressed the set-up of a comprehensive SME policy framework, but European institutions seem to have focused more on organisational devices to conduct business activities rather than on contractual forms of coordination. In April 2009, Italy adopted a law in network contract to promote the development of inter-firm cooperation strategies to foster enterprises' innovation and growth. Even if this law represents a novelty in Europe and may offer new challenges and hints, it still presents some lacks in its formulation. The current research aims at presenting the Italian law for network contract and a comparison with other models of SME aggregations adopted in EU countries. A formal model to support the design of an SME network was proposed, by providing both an ontology-based model to help the definition of the contract in a structured way, and a basic workflow to identify the important phases of the network design, i.e. the feasibility study and the negotiation.

Promoting SME cooperative aggregations: main criteria and contractual models / Villa, Agostino; Bruno, Giulia. - In: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH. - ISSN 0020-7543. - 51:23-24(2013), pp. 7439-7447. [10.1080/00207543.2013.831503]

Promoting SME cooperative aggregations: main criteria and contractual models

VILLA, AGOSTINO;BRUNO, GIULIA
2013

Abstract

Collaboration is considered an effective solution to improve business strategies. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) often lack common principles and common forms of contractual coordination. Several policies implemented by the EU have addressed the set-up of a comprehensive SME policy framework, but European institutions seem to have focused more on organisational devices to conduct business activities rather than on contractual forms of coordination. In April 2009, Italy adopted a law in network contract to promote the development of inter-firm cooperation strategies to foster enterprises' innovation and growth. Even if this law represents a novelty in Europe and may offer new challenges and hints, it still presents some lacks in its formulation. The current research aims at presenting the Italian law for network contract and a comparison with other models of SME aggregations adopted in EU countries. A formal model to support the design of an SME network was proposed, by providing both an ontology-based model to help the definition of the contract in a structured way, and a basic workflow to identify the important phases of the network design, i.e. the feasibility study and the negotiation.
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
sme_network_submitted_CON_FIGURE.pdf

accesso aperto

Descrizione: Borsa DIGEP
Tipologia: 1. Preprint / submitted version [pre- review]
Licenza: PUBBLICO - Tutti i diritti riservati
Dimensione 774.71 kB
Formato Adobe PDF
774.71 kB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri
Pubblicazioni consigliate

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11583/2522364
 Attenzione

Attenzione! I dati visualizzati non sono stati sottoposti a validazione da parte dell'ateneo