A typology of networks: flexible and evolutionary firms

Abstract

It is well known that today we are witnesseas to an enormous growth and increasing variety of ways to apply knowledge and technology in continuously changing industrial systems. New sources of information through interrelated and interactive flows of communication are combined throughout those that can be called network-inducing technologies: communication devises, information nets, telecomputing, Ž EDI, etc. The networking of the economy Belussi . and Garibaldo, 1996 implies a complex and coherent redesign of institutions and organisations. The emergence of institutional or informal networks, formed by clusters, groups or vertical filieres of `