Small and Medium Sized Food Enterprise Networks in Supply Chains: The Case of Parma Ham

摘要

Numerous commentators have highlighted the ever-quickening cycle of change in the business environment and in society in general, such factors as technology, political change and changing government role, and the globalisation of markets and the companies supplying them have featured strongly as change drivers (Peters, 1987; Champy and Nitin, 1988; Thompson, 1991). How organisations and society in general actually respond and contribute to this ever-quickening cycle of change is an interesting but inherently complicated question. Networks have often been forwarded as an organisational response to such changing and often contradictory demands, for example fragmenting market segments and globalisation of the market, increased efficiency and flexibility, increased coordination and decentralisation. Indeed in some respects the very existence of small and medium sized firms (SMEs) runs contrary to trends such as increasingly globalised markets dominated by major brands and consolidated retailers. Yet these enterprises can capitalise on niche market opportunities, however access to markets beyond their immediate locality often presents formidable challenges. A case study methodology was adopted to probe into the reasons small and medium sized food firms establish/join networks, how and why these networks evolve and how they perform and respond to internal and external factors especially in food supply chains. This paper reports on the findings of an investigation into the Parma Ham consortium. Enterprises joined the Parma Ham consortium to improve access to resources, in particular they sought to leverage collective economies of scale. The networking process was influenced by member goal congruence, the level and type/content of interaction and in particular the relevance of network services to members needs and expectations. The Parma Ham consortium was found to co-ordinate a series of transaction-transformation chains that enhanced member competitiveness, however from an enterprise perspective such competitiveness is to a large extent based on external collectively owned competencies.