The renewal of business ties and the reproduction of networks with customers and suppliers

Abstract

This paper have the purpose to investigate on the question: is possible to reproduce with a model and in a laboratory of practice management the evolution of business ties maintained by enterprises with their Customers and Suppliers.
The research is based on the Hans Bolza’s concept of renewal and on the results obtained in the laboratory of practice management from 2001 by the Forli’s Faculty of Economics of the Bologna University by the team of one of the Authors 3 . The main of researchers was to individuate and validate a model useful to reproduce the behaviour of the business links managed by enterprise with customers and suppliers. The renewal of these links was considered representative of their longevity and of the dynamic of the derived networks. The empirical side of the research was represented by surveys on Emilia Romagna SMEs and the experimental one by the results of the simulation in laboratory.
Although the numerosity of contributions by scholars on the topic, the literature on the renewal of links based on this methodology is scarce and this paper would contribute to extend the knowledge about this topic to open a new field of researches.