Abstract:

Interorganizational cooperation is becoming increasingly important in the modern economy. The daily practice of enterprises is to simultaneously participate in many interorganizational systems, e.g. network structures and supply chains. At the same time, the interdependencies resulting from the impact of various interorganizational systems are, to date, a very poorly recognized cognitive and research area. The aim of this article is to present the complexity of relations between enterprises, which are both network organization actors and links in many supply chains in the context of the increasing combinational potential of a network. Operation within the network structure is the more attractive for enterprises, the greater its combinational potential, which is understood as the number of possible relations between actors of the interorganizational network. The article underlines that the conditions for the development of combinational potential may relate to the operational nature of cooperation. As a result of empirical research (135 manufacturing enterprises belonging to cluster organizations and cooperating within cluster supply chains), it was established that there is a positive relation between the use of supply chain standards by enterprises belonging to an organizational network and the intensity of their cooperation in supply chains. Therefore, the use of supply chain standards by enterprises operating within a network organization is a factor determining the development of the combinational potential of the network.