COLLECTIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS POSSIBLE? AN ANALYSIS OF THE FORMATION PROCESS OF COOPERATIVE RELATIONSHIPS IN NETWORK

Abstract

In the attempt to find economically sustainable strategies, many organizations are looking for different alternatives. In one of these alternatives, organizations tend to make use of cooperative practices of management, aiming to complement its potentialities. This work objective to analyze the process of networks appearing in the central region of Rio Grande do Sul, under the prism of entrepreneur agents. For that, it was tried to discover how these new forms of organization originated,  what are the factors that influence companies to adhere this cooperative process, how these horizontal relationships are structured and what forms of this new organizational structure to dissolve. For this analysis, it was studied 3 supermarket networks, and data was collected through 28 interviews. Results show that to be able to compete in this environment, company, almost necessarily, has to join a network. The acting focus of studied networks, despite limited, guarantees to its associates some benefits that they with difficulty would have individually. Despite studied networks do not aim new collective benefits, what generates opportunism between the actors, it was observed that creation of networks establish an excellent strategic alternative to companies survival.