I. Chaston, Existing propensity to cooperate: an antecedent influencing the potential performance of small-business networks?, ENVIR PL-C, 17(5), 1999, pp. 567-576
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.