The Impact of Strategic Networking on Business Performance of Manufacturing SMEs Operating in a Predominantly Service Based Economy

Abstract

Strategic networking represents a strategic intent of the firm to develop meaningful and sustainable long-term coopetitional business relationships with various market players. Through such market relationships, the focal firm can focus on the further development of its own core competences and simultaneously garner the network benefits. The purpose of this article is to examine the role and the level of influence strategic networking has on the performance of Croatian manufacturing SMEs. The relationship between strategic networking and business performance has been further tested by looking into a set of financial and non-financial performance indicators, where moderating role of the external environment has been used to even further explore the observed relationship. Although unidimensional analysis reveals positive influence of strategic networking on business performance, that is not the case when multidimensional analysis is applied, where only the reputation among other strategic networking antecedents has a significantly positive influence. Therefore, it can be concluded that these research results are inconclusive, whether looking at the existence, strength or direction of the observed relationships, and require further research.

Keywords

• strategic networking
• business performance
• external environment
• manufacturing smes
• multidimensional analysis