Enterprises and Ecosystems: Features’ Relational Analysis

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of the organizational and institutional differences between the enterprises and ecosystems given in relational key and with the use of four-typed system language of G.B.Kleiner, applied for description of institutions as well. Features of different business-ecosystems with indication of dominated characteristics are analyzed which are as follows: innovation-oriented industrial clusters as objective systems, technological platforms as environmental systems, networks as processed systems and business-incubators as projective systems. An evolutionary logic of the enterprise development is presented with accent on two aspects: existential (enterprises are treated as existing objects, legal entities, as a rule, entering into explicit contractual relations and/or practicing implicit relations within themselves) and transactional (mattered in inter-firm interactions or relations between existing or potential elements of hybrid structures). Other logic connects to networks, especially, innovative – principally non-hierarchical structures, relied on the information power provided by the new technological paradigm. It is confirmed that the main difference between competing and functioning in market environment enterprises and such acting in the frame of ecosystems is the studied in the paper enterprises form functional unity with all types of ecosystems, however with different degree of intensity of this unity connection.