What is Collaborative Networked Organization

Due to the increasing heterogeneity and dynamics of the economy, more and more enterprises are challenged to adapt continuously to rapid changes, to concentrate on their core competencies as well as to search for competitive advantages and innovations (e.g., Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). Rapid technological advances and altered customer demands create a new dynamic and complex business environment, which requires flexibility and mobility of enterprises (Camarinha-Matos, 2002). For these reasons, different enterprises have to cooperate in order to meet customer needs effectively, to encounter the contemporary prevalent high competition and innovation pressure as well as to be permanently successful in largely saturated markets. In this respect, the opening of an organization’s borders is no longer regarded as a necessary evil but rather as an opportunity of strategic importance. Current approaches mainly focus on the cross-enterprise integration of data, functions, and processes for operational purposes within such collaborative business structures (e.g., Adam, Chikova, Hofer, & Vanderhaeghen, 2005; Grefen, Aberer, Hoffner, & Ludwig, 2001; Schulz, 2002). The driving force behind such activities is to generate a win-win-situation for all partners, whether by creating new structures or by adapting the existing ones, realizing an optimization objective. However, how do you measure if this postulated win-win situation by concentration on core competences is really achieved? The question is: Has the cooperation yielded the objectives that had been determined in the run-up? Is the cooperation really as successful as it was intended to be or can it be improved?