Motivos que levam as empresas a retirarem-se dos processos cooperativos: contribuições para a formação, gestão e desenvolvimento de redes interorganizacionais

Abstract

The cooperation networks among companies are strategies used by managers to act in the market, aiming to add more value to the companies and create competitive advantage. The network after being formed can be considered as a new firm, that is, a new activities coordinator with a set of new knowledge, resources, capacities and competences. However, after its beggining, the development of the network is linked to overcome internal and external limitations imposed to it. It is argued that the studies on this type of cooperation, from a theoretical and empirical point of view, emphasize excessively the reasons and benefits of the cooperative strategies, but little about the aspects which lead the companies to leave the horizontal networks. Previous studies (TOIGO and ALBA, 2010; WEGNER, ZEN and ANDINO, 2008) have reported that a significative number of companies leave the cooperation processes and an expressive number of networks finish their activities prematurely. So, this study has aimed mainly to identify the reasons which lead companies to leave the interorganizational networks where they used to belong. Verify the reasons that guide a firm to leave the network could be a way to lessen the problems and difficulties that come out during the process of the network formation and, mostly, in the development, helping its managing. Besides that, this study is justified by the importance of reducing the gaps in the understanding of this issue and it aims to substantiate the consolidation of a theoretical copus on the phenomenon. To accomplish this objective, first it was held an exploratory study with 7 network presidents who had members leaving the network and 11 entrepreneurs who have left the networks in which they used to take part. This stage of the research was realized through semistructured interviews, that have allowed to understand the exposed reasons by the two groups of interviwees. It was also realized a descriptive research with 140 businesspeople who had left the networks, through questionnaires. The results have shown that in certain aspects the interviwed presidents and entrepreneurs agreed about the factors which lead companies to leave the networks. Among these factor it is highlighted the lack of criteria to select the members, lack of trust and commitment, opportunism and the individualism of the members, high costs of the network and not reaching the objectives and goals proposed. A determinat factor that only the presidents have emphasized is the immediacy for results. They have explained that, from their point of view, many entrepreneurs did not have the patience to wait the network to organize itself and then generate some value to the members. On the other hand, reasons mentioned only by the entrepreneurs were the individualized management, asymmetry of returns, dubious dealing with supliers and conflict about the image and patterning of the stores. These were some of the considerations found in the exploratory part of the research. In the descriptive part, determinant factors were confirmed as relevant to the exit of the company from the network as: previous weak social ties, bad partners selection, abscence of legitimacy to the companies, oportunist managing, lack of trust and commitment, low resource exchange, members oportunism, goals and objectives not achieved, low interorganizational learning, high network costs, little value management and innovation and individualism among the members. It is highlighted that the hypothesis raised by the presidents that the immediacy by results would be a factor leading entrepreneurs out of the cooperation networks was not confirmed. The determinant factors found in this research point out the difficulty that prevails on the governance structures and management of networks. The challenge is to organize the network as to avoid possible disorders from the managing decisions and to ease the problems identified in this study, in a way that maintains the companies in the network creating value and competitive advantages to them.