Non-business Actors in the Context of Business Networks : Problems and opportunities

While the business network traditionally put the emphasis on the business actors, the attempt in this paper is to expand the conceptual boundary of the business network and include non-business actors. A commercial company may be a partner in a network consisting of not only business actors such as customers, sub-contractors, distributors etc., but also of non-business actors such as government bodies, NGOs, local communities and other non-business actors. Therefore the interplay between two business actors differs widely from the interplay between a business actor and a non-business actor, or between two non-business actors. This leads to the different nature of relationships regarding business and non-business actors in a network. We discuss also the infusion of non-business intermediary actors in order to bridge the gap between business and non-business actors.