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 networks. The limited number of existing networks vitiated any study of these trading entities by means of established techniques for measuring commitment or trust. Hence an alternative model, based on relationship and entrepreneurial marketing, was developed. A survey of small manufacturing firms was used to validate the model. The results demonstrate that the model can be used by brokers to identify rapidly propensity to cooperation among a group of potential network participants.