The Network Manager and the Governance of Business Networks

Abstract

Collaborating with other structures offers businesses – particularly smaller ones – excellent support to enable them to successfully face up to the challenges posed by globalised markets: by joining forces, creating systems and weaving networks of collaborative relationships with other businesses, SMEs can achieve the critical mass necessary to compete on global markets, because they can benefit from the “systemic” economies of scale that are typical of medium and large business, without losing any of the specificity that only a small manufacturing organisation can offer. However, the coordination and governance of a network is anything but simple, in view of the different types of distances (cognitive, psychological, cultural, geographical, etc.) that separate the businesses in the network. This explains the utility of a managerial figure outside the network (the Network Manager) with the ability to direct, coordinate and run the business network. This article focuses on the figure of the Network Manager, trying to define it by comparison with a few interesting managerial figures identified in the spectrum of management literature.