151. Business partnerships : the formal, the informal, and the local.
- Author
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Bowonder, B. and Vonortas, Nicholas S.
- Subjects
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INTERNATIONAL business enterprises , *INTERNATIONAL competition , *BUSINESS partnerships , *PRIVATE sector - Abstract
Since the first half of the 1980s, when the first data were put together to map the sudden burst of inter-firm cooperation in Europe and the U.S., it has been established that partnerships constitute an important mechanism of business interaction, learning, and resource and market access around the world. The pace of technological advance has accelerated significantly, partly as a result of increasing competition through globalization. In addition to being an outcome of competitive pressures, however, technology is an enabler of globalization. Special attention has been paid in the literature to the characteristics of knowledge-based partnering among firms, universities, and other research organizations. The new mechanisms entail the formation of dense webs of inter-organizational networks that provide the private sector with the necessary flexibility to achieve multiple objectives in the face of intense international competition. Formal and informal partnering could indeed be perceived as a continuum where formal enterprise cooperation, clustering, and informal networking are complementary modes of operation.
- Published
- 2004