Le reti di imprese e il loro finanziamento

Business networks are forms of aggregation that allow companies to pool assets and resources in order to improve the functioning of these activities and to strengthen the competitiveness of their business. Business networks are becoming increasingly important in order to pursue
technological innovation, growth in foreign markets, optimization of know-how, sharing of the investments in R&D and achievement of organizational synergies; in particular allowing firms to join these networks without losing their autonomy. Following a description of the main aspects of the recent Italian legislation of the network contract, this paper aims to check whether or not firms that belong to networks present more favourable financing conditions and higher profitability. For this purpose, we created a database of more than 4,000 Italian firms that have signed a network contract in the period 2009-2012, comparing them with a control sample of non-networked firms. Then we investigated the characteristics of network contracts that involve the best performance for networked firms. We found that the firms that belongs to network contracts have better financial conditions. In particular, firms belonging to small networks present higher
profitability and better funding conditions.