Abstract

ZOUBOULAKIS, Michel S.  and  KAMARIANOS, John. RATIONALITY AND COOPERATION BETWEEN FIRMS. TESTING HABITUAL BEHAVIOUR IN GREEK INDUSTRIES. Rev.econ.inst. [online]. 2002, vol.4, n.7, pp.98-113. ISSN 0124-5996.

The aim of this empirical research was to test the influence of some social factors such as social norms, habits and routines, which are actually constraining the entrepreneurial strategy. In order to measure the extent of these influences we have focused on informal arrangements and cooperation between firms, including informal relations, trust links, family links etc. Firms having long term informal relations benefit from lower costs of making transactions enforceable, including the costs of information and planning, and furthermore protect themselves from the hazards of opportunism. In doing so, firms do cooperate consciously adopting patterns of behaviour that largely exceed market arrangements. This is true not only for non-competing firms (i.e. firms with client-customer relations) who have developed in that direction a nexus of diverse long-term strategies, but also for competing firms producing identical goods.

Keywords : rationality; cooperation; trust; informal relations; transaction costs; opportunism; competitive firms; non competitive firms.

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