The Role of NGOS in Business-To-Business Markets

Abstract

While the business-to-business markets traditionally put the emphasis on the business actors, this paper is to expand the conceptual boundary of the business-to-business network and include non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A commercial company may be a partner in a network consisting of not only business actors such as customers, sub-contractors, distributors etc., but also of non-business actors such as government bodies, NGOs, local communities and other non-business actors. Therefore the interaction between two business actors differs widely from the interaction between a business actor and a non-business actor, or between two non-business actors. This leads to the different nature of relationships regarding business and non-business actors in a network. We discuss also the infusion of non-business intermediary actors in order to bridge the gap between business and non-business actors. In this paper, we examine the effects of NGOs on the commercial companies’ business network.