FORTRANS

RESEARCH ASSOCIATION FOR TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKING - SUCCESS BY INTERCULTURAL RISK MANAGEMENT

Opportunism in international business networks

Field of work:

To compete with the challenges of a global competition, many firms cooperate in international networks. Like this they are able to reduce production and transaction costs as well as investments and to overcome know how and capacity limits. On the other hand networks also entail new risks. Network-management challenges the involved firms in different ways. However, until today we still know very little about the development, the organization and the profit contribution of the different forms of cooperation in networks. With our project we investigate existing networks and examine strategies for their successful management. Starting from two countries (USA, Mexico) international networks of German small and medium-sized businesses are going to be analyzed. In detail, we are looking for answers to the following questions: (1)What are the aims that the collaborating businesses try to achieve with their cooperation? (2) How do the businesses cooperate (choice of partners, formation, structuring, evaluation)? (3) What difficulties appear during the cooperation and how do the actors handle them? (4) What recommendations can be derived from the analysis for practice? This research aims to secure inter-firm networks and to optimize their management.