Il Network contract like tool for companies to access new markets, possibly across national borders, but also to deliver specialized services or to better organize the supply chainin vertical networks. That's what the research shows "Network contracts: a comparative analysis", written by the Bruno Visentini Foundation, and promoted by Unioncamere and RetImpresa-Confindustria.
A complex objective, the one that the foundation has set itself, to outline the composite picture of a new discipline (the network contract was introduced only in 2009) through the analysis of the practices of the first 214 contracts entered in the register between 2010 and 2011.
Many interesting data emerge from the research, cas the diffusion of the networks throughout the Italian territory, with a prevalence in the north, and the substantial irrelevance, from a statistical point of view, of the trans-European networks. In the study, then, we also look at the composition of the established networks mainly from small and medium-sized enterprises, mostly in the form of joint stock companies, above all srl .
Variable is the number of companies that make up a network, though 70% of them include between 3 and 9 companies. There are also numerous cases in which networks between networks are established through the contract. From a structural point of view, the networks, which often formalize pre-existing relationships through contracts, can be of two types: vertical or horizontal, while the duration of the agreement is on average more than five years. Usually decision-making power is sharedeven if there is a rather small minority of cases in which it is attributed to a single company.
The picture that the study outlines, therefore, is that of a useful tool to promote business cooperation, and already widely used, and which helps companies to pursue objectives otherwise unattainable for individual companies, especially if we look at foreign markets. A tool full of potential, destined, after this first phase, to assume growing importance for Italian companies.
