Risk mitigation through formalized cooperation: preliminary Findings on a sample of Italian network contracts

The collaboration between enterprises is a widespread phenomenon in the life of companies. Every company necessarily develops economic relations with other organisations in order to identify the best conditions for carrying out its activities and achieving its objectives. These relationships have different forms and intensities. The inter-relationships can produce market exchanges or collaboration agreements that are more intense, coordinated and organised in the medium to long term. The agreements may give rise to corporate collaborations or partnerships of companies. While retaining their legal independence and competition, they agree to work together on some activities with the intent to improve their performance, taking advantage of external opportunities offered by the complex environmental evolution. In particular, the research question is focused on business cooperation identified in the Italian context, with a specific agreement represented by the business networks contract. The objective of this work – inserted in Jel classification L14 – is to evaluate the opportunity to assess whether the risks associated with business performance can be mitigated by strategic cooperation as business networks. The research of an empirical nature is based on the analysis of a random sample of 100 network contracts from the universe of Italian network contracts to 31 December 2015. The source of the data is the company records kept by the Italian Chambers of Commerce. The research aims to analyse the content of cooperation agreements like network business contracts in order to assess whether the mitigation of specific risks represents one of the factors that encourage entrepreneurs to participate in these forms of association. In particular, through accurate analysis of network contracts, we intend to develop specific categories of risk that are intended to be reduced by sharing them. Some types of risk mitigated by the network contract include trade, financial, lack of innovation and environmental risks.