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Network
Enterprise, consisting of buildings, machine tools, technologies and staff is located in a definite educational, juridical, financial, economical and political environment. Enterprise and its surroundings form physical business environment. Enterprise can be connected more or less with other ambient enterprises and supporting structures. From here the term 'co-operation' and different realisation possibilities of co-operation arise. Functional communities departing from boundaries of a single enterprise or rigidly structured group of enterprises (concern) are shown on Fig 1.
Fig.1 Enterprise and its surrounding
Common functional associations (industrial structures) of nowadays economic life (Fig. 2) are following:
Strategic alliance is a long-term co-operation agreement between two or more independent partners, sharing resources to obtain essential strategic advantages: expansion of market share, broadening of technological basis. Industrial clusters, as these networks of relationships are known, link competing businesses and competing suppliers with collaborative research institutions, public and private sources of financing, government regulatory and development agencies, and new institutions built for the sole purpose of organizing and energizing these relationships. Cluster groups are geographic concentrations of interconnected companies, specialised suppliers, service providers, firms in related industries, and associated institutions (for example, universities, standards agencies, and trade associations) in particular fields that compete but also co-operate. Due to intensive growth of Internet the geographic borders are not playing such an important role. Last decade brought with a term ‘virtual enterprise’. The virtual enterprise is a set of co-operating (legally) independent organisations, based on modern telecommunication means, which to the outside world provide a set of services and a functionality as if they were one organisation. However, it turned out, that work on the ICT support of a virtual organisation should primarily be based on a clear model of the virtual organisation itself . A co-operation or business network consists of several firms that have ongoing communication and interaction, and might have a certain level of interdependence, but that need not operate in related industries or be geographically concentrated in space.
Fig. 2 Functional associations
The term ‘extended enterprise’ represents the concept that a company is made up not just of its employees, its board members, and executives, but also its business partners, its suppliers, and even its customers. The extended enterprise can only be successful if all of the component groups and individuals have the information they need in order to do business effectively. Modern production can be managed only via looking for complex solutions. Globalisation and integration are origins for establishing business networks. When nodes and interim connections are defined and located in a certain area a structure will be constituted. General goals of network are as follows:
There are several different means for networks. The main differences between network and cluster are represented in Table 1. Table 1. Network versus cluster
Table 2 BUSINESS NETWORK OF ENTERPRISES
Business network questionnaire form for downloading is available here.
Fig. 3 Business network overall vision
Fig. 4 Realisation of business network |
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