The evolution of some collaborative marketing networks of SME's

Many small manufacturing firms are becoming dislinked from their traditional client connections as those larger manufacturing clients strive to reduce costs by either moving production to lower cost countries or working with fewer, more capable suppliers. This paper explores learnings from a case study project (RELINK) where relatively large numbers of SME’s combined their resources to establish new supply chain linkages in both domestic and international markets. Both a form of narrative sequence analysis and complexity theory is used to identify key events and some actor interdependencies. The project was stimulated by two industry associations who played a vital role in exploring opportunities. But as the participating firms, who were normally competitors, started to do things together, a range of spinoff projects were rapidly established independent of those associations. The firms had some success in accessing international opportunities by presenting their combined capabilities and a business model for working together to new clients. The evolutionary pathway observed was related to a series of antecedent events that were only evident in retrospect, and to the emergence of some collaborating focal firms that could organise smaller firms to support them. A balance between the ways the focal firms were similar and the ways they were complementary is seen as important in establishing sustainable collaboration. Some ideas based on complexity theory are used to discuss managing in circumstances where there are multiple contingent factors.