Existing propensity to cooperate: an antecedent influencing the potential performance of small-business networks?

Various governments around the world have introduced small-firm structured networking as an economic-regeneration tool into their respective economies . Early observations of the initiative in the United Kingdom suggested that the ability of the broker to identify the propensity of firms to cooperate with each other has a critical impact on the successful formation of new n etworks. The limited number of existing networks vitiated any study of thes e trading entities by means of established techniques for measuring commitm ent or trust. Hence an alternative model, based on relationship and entrepr eneurial marketing, was developed. A survey of small manufacturing firms wa s used to validate the model. The results demonstrate that the model can be used by brokers to identify rapidly propensity to cooperation among a grou p of potential network participants.