INTER-ORGANIZATIONAL COLLABORATION FOR INNOVATION IN MANUFACTURING FIRMS

From day to day, taking part in the collaboration process in different business aspects, especially in the innovation process continues to gain in importance. Innovation enables companies to strive for a more powerful market position, while inter-organizational cooperation is perceived as an efficient means of enhancement of firm innovativeness. The purpose of this paper is to present the state of inter-organizational collaboration for innovation among manufacturing companies in Vojvodina, analyzing cooperation among manufacturing firms with different external parties, in different innovation areas. Furthermore, the aim is to examine the effects of inter-organizational collaboration on the innovativeness of manufacturing firms in Vojvodina. The data used in this paper was gathered within the international project European Manufacturing Survey. The results are presented using descriptive statistics and they demonstrate that the existence and frequency of inter-organizational collaboration, although quite present, depends on external parties as potential cooperation partners and on different innovation areas in which collaboration could occur. Also, the research shows there is a notable relation between interorganizational collaboration and firm innovativeness.