doiSerbia

Non-wood forest products based enterprises’ cooperation and business networking forms in central Serbia

Nedeljković Jelena (Šumarski fakultet, Beograd)
Nonić Dragan (Šumarski fakultet, Beograd)
Ranković Nenad (Šumarski fakultet, Beograd)
Dragović Nada (Šumarski fakultet, Beograd)

Collaboration between enterprises includes all activities, which are undertaken in order to achieve common goals and interests. Business networking involves the establishment of various forms of associations and business communities, with or without the creation of new economic entities. The aim of the paper was to study the forms of cooperation between non-wood forest products based small and medium enterprises, as well as to determine the attitudes of their representatives towards cooperation and business networking with other enterprises in Central Serbia. Research included 91 non-wood forest product based small and medium enterprises and 19 representatives of leading enterprises, which were selected based on specifically defined criteria. Both the methods of analysis and synthesis and comparative and statistical methods were applied in the paper. The results indicate that almost all analyzed enterprises cooperate with other enterprises. The most common form of cooperation is present “during selling” and “during purchase”. The majority of leading enterprises’ representatives are members of some of the existing associations of entrepreneurs. Based on the analysis, it was found that there is a need for development of cooperation between the analyzed enterprises. In accordance with that, proposals for the improvement of business networking were given. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 43007: Istraživanja klimatskih promena i njihovog uticaja na životnu sredinu - praćenje uticaja, adaptacija i ublažavanje”, podprojekat 43007/16-III: Socio-ekonomski razvoj, ublažavanje i adaptacija na klimatske promene i br. 37008-TR: Održivo gazdovanje ukupnim potencijalima šuma u Republici Srbiji

Keywords: cooperation, business networking, small and medium enterprises, non-wood forest products, Central Serbia