Andrea Cardoni
email: acardoni@unipg.it

Lorenzo Tiacci
email: lorenzo.tiacci@unipg.it

The "Enterprises' Network Agreement": The Italian Way to Stimulate Reindustrialization for Entrepreneurial and Economic Development of SMEs

Keywords: institutional support, enterprises' network agreement, collaborative and strategic networks, reindustrialization

Moving from the key features of knowledge economy and taking into consideration the new paradigms emerged in economic and managerial studies, in many countries several institutions have promoted the formation of strategic alliances to stimulate the reindustrialization and promote the national and regional development. The Italian government has recently defined a new legal framework (law n. 122/2010) to implement collaborative strategic networks through the "enterprises' network agreement". The latest data about the implementation of the new form of collaborative networks show a rapid spread of the agreement and represent an important result to read in the light of economic, managerial and industrial literature. In the paper the main characteristics of the agreement are described and discussed, and an analysis based on historical data, since two years from its introduction, is presented. The aim is to evaluate how this kind of tool can have an impact on the reindustrialization of the Country and the emergence of second generation VBE on this process.

Introduction

The creation and development of collaborative networks and alliances is thought to be the best strategy to adapt the business structure to the main features of the knowledge economy, especially in the economic contexts characterized by the presence of SMEs [START_REF] Macpherson | Knowledge, learning and small firm growth: A systematic review of the evidence[END_REF][START_REF] Donkels | Network and small business growth: an explanatory model[END_REF] and entrepreneurial business [START_REF] Parker | The economics of formal business networks[END_REF]. Moving from the key features of knowledge economy and taking into consideration the new paradigms emerged in economic and managerial studies [START_REF] Etzkovitz | The Triple Helix[END_REF][START_REF] Johanson | Network Strategies for Regional Growth[END_REF], European countries are promoting the formation of strategic alliances to stimulate the national and regional development [START_REF] Cafaggi | Contractual Networks and the Small Business Act: Towards European Principles?[END_REF][START_REF]OECD: The Bologna charter on SME policies[END_REF], providing institutional and financial support to companies willing to cooperate and set up a network. In the last few years, there is in Italy an increasing demand in the industrial world for concretely implement this new forms of collaborations. For example, demand often comes from pre-existent form of clusters or consortiums, which want to evolve to more efficient forms of collaboration [START_REF] Cardoni | Evaluating how potential pool of partners can join together in different types of long term collaborative networked organizations[END_REF][START_REF] Tiacci | How to move from traditional to innovative models of networked organizations: a methodology and a case study in the metal-mechanic industry[END_REF][START_REF] Saetta | The innovative model of the Virtual Development Office for collaborative networked enterprises: the GPT network case study[END_REF]. The latest initiative of the Italian government is based on the definition of a new legal framework (law n. 122/2010) to formalize the implementation of cooperation strategies: the "enterprises' network agreement" [START_REF] Cafaggi | Il contratto di rete[END_REF].

Following the most important streams of literature on strategic alliances [START_REF] Jarrillo | On Strategic Networks[END_REF][START_REF] Gulati | Managing Network Resources. Alliances, Affiliations, and other Relational Assets[END_REF][START_REF] Romero | Virtual organisation breeding environments value system and its elements[END_REF][START_REF] Romero | Collaborative networked organisations and customer communities: value co-creation and co-innovation in the networking era[END_REF] it is expected that this tool can generate a strong spread of CNOs strategic purposes, and can have a strong impact on the processes of economic development. The present study therefore considers all network contracts entered into since the start of the law (2010) until December 2012, analyzes their characteristics in terms of size, spatial localization and sectorial distribution and assesses the impact that this tool can have on the process of re-industrialization.

The paper is organized as follows: in section 2, a synthetic summary of the institutional and theoretical framework is reported; in section 3, the data and the methodology of the analysis is described; in section 4 we report the results of the study and discuss about the main implications; in section 5 conclusions are drawn.

Institutional and Theoretical Framework

The small size of Italian firms is a relevant limit to the achievement of greater efficiency: it often reduces the ability to change strategies, to internationalize, innovate and in general to cope with competitive pressures.

This circumstances threaten the strategic development and the performance of the Italian industrial system, still characterized by an important role played by the manufacturing business that however need to implement a process of reindustrialization based on innovation and higher critical mass, reaching only through network collaboration (Industry 2015). According to the Italian authorities all companies in Italy, but especially SME, are reluctant to cooperate, given that there were in Italy, until 2010, no effective and simple legal form of cooperation, allowing carrying out common activities (or other forms of cooperation) within a pre-defined legal framework. In this context there were spaces for public intervention in order to stimulate the creation of formal networks between undertakings as an alternative or preliminary to the growth in size. Already in 2000 the "Bologna Charter" adopted by OECD countries [START_REF]OECD: The Bologna charter on SME policies[END_REF] recognized networks as an important driver of competitiveness of small enterprises and in 2008 the Small Business Act, the European Union defined lines of action to promote the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, encouraging the involvement of national governments in this area [START_REF] Cafaggi | Contractual Networks and the Small Business Act: Towards European Principles?[END_REF].

While other existing forms of legally structured cooperation, such as temporary associations of enterprises, are temporary aggregations of companies to undertake a specific operation, the contract would therefore provide the most flexible and general form of association among companies, with limited rules to ensure only transparency and stability of contractual relationships. According to Italian authorities [16] this measure was strongly demanded by Italian companies and their associations and responded to the specific structure of the Italian industry, characterized by the existence of numerous and small individually-owned companies, willing to cooperate while maintaining their independence.

The law n.122/2010 defined the "enterprises' network agreement" as the legal tool needed to formalize strategic alliances among entrepreneurs whose "aim is to enhance, on an individual or collective basis, their innovation capabilities and their competitiveness on the market" undertaking the commitment to: i) "cooperate in different ways on a specific business related to the management of their own enterprises (or); ii) sharing information and services of an industrial, commercial, technical or technological kind (or); ii) managing in a collaborative way one or more activity included on the mission statement of the companies".

From an organizational perspective the contract can be implemented for a wide variety of collaborations, both in terms of vertical alliance, f.e. in the form of supply chain among companies that operate in the same sector at different stages of production, and horizontal alliance, f.e. among competitors sharing some special projects of innovation and strategic development. The last strategic option can be useful especially for SMEs that, though competing in their local markets, may form special alliances to reach wider markets or implement internationalization project. However, even on the structural perspective, the contract does not provide size limits and can be signed by SME's or large companies and be utilized to set up collaboration among partners with homogeneous or heterogeneous dimensions. The supporting measure consists in a tax deferral: a part of taxable revenue, targeted by participating companies for achieving the purpose of the contract and put in a specific reserve, will be excluded from the calculation of taxable income, for the duration of the contract. Such benefit is temporary, given that the money put aside for the participation to the network will be included in the tax base once the contract is fulfilled.

The contract has to be drawn according to a formal procedure with a notary, requiring an official registration with the competent Chamber of Commerce where the companies reside, and it must indicate (law n. 122/2010): i) references of partners; ii) strategic objectives; iii) performance measurement criteria to assess the progress toward strategic goals achievement; iv) network action plan; v) duration of the agreement ; v) specific endowment to manage cooperation activity.

Assessing this regulatory discipline in the light of the theoretical framework, the definition of network agreement by law n. 122/2010 is consistent with the concept of strategic network [START_REF] Jarrillo | On Strategic Networks[END_REF][START_REF] Gulati | Managing Network Resources. Alliances, Affiliations, and other Relational Assets[END_REF][START_REF] Ricciardi | Strategie di cooperazione tra aziende e mitigazione del rischio operativo: i vantaggi competitivi delle reti di imprese[END_REF], considered as an intentional, long-term alliance enabling different companies to acquire or defend the competitive advantage against competitors outside the network. However, on the basis of an exploratory study performed on the first 50 network agreements formalized in Italy [START_REF] Cardoni | Business planning and management accounting in strategic networks: theoretical development and empirical evidence from enterprises' network "agreement[END_REF], it is possible to assume that the strategic objectives tend to be generic and the agreement could be better interpreted as a goal-oriented Collaborative Networked Organizations (CNOs) defined as alliance "driven by continuous production/service provision activities, characterized by a long-term duration and remaining relatively stable during that duration, with a clear definition of members' roles along the value chain". More particularly the "strategic" focus and the need to indicate the strategic goals of the alliance allow to frame the network agreement in a VBE perspective [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | A framework for virtual organization creation in a breeding environment[END_REF] defined as "strategic alliance of organizations and related supporting institutions adhering to a base long term cooperation agreement, and adopting common operating principles and infrastructures, with the main goal of increasing both their chances and their preparedness towards collaboration in potential VOs", enabling the new model to play a crucial role on manufacturing re-industrialization [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | Collaborative networked organizations: Status and trends in manufacturing[END_REF]. In this framework the 2nd generation VBEs that are not bound to geographical regions or specific activities and integrate their process through innovative ICT approach shall play an active role in the society/market as competitive entities [START_REF] Afsarmanesh | On management of 2nd generation Virtual Organizations Breeding Environments[END_REF].

Data and Methodology

The paper considers the entire population of all network agreements signed under the new legislation framework defined by the Italian government with law n. 122/2010. At December 2012 this population includes 647 agreements recorded in the official Chamber of Commerce registers, at provincial and national level (Unioncamere), characterized by the following dimensions (Tab. 1). We can note that over 20% business entities present the typical organizational structure of entrepreneurial and small enterprises (individual businesses and partnership). In addition some recent studies [START_REF] Bentivogli | Le reti di imprese[END_REF] performed on the agreements formalized until December 2011 confirmed the small and medium size of the companies involved in the contracts, employing less than 10 people on 39.2% of the cases, from 10 to 19 employees on 19.4%, from 20 to 49 on 14.4% and over 50 for 12.0% of the total. Financial indicators of these companies complete the analysis and highlight the high presence of SME's, presenting the following median values: 2,708,000 € of total asset, 2,275,000 € of turnover and EBITDA margin at 7.9%.

The data base reported for each contract the following records: name of the network, strategic goals identified, date of set-up, names of the partners involved, VAT number and the statistic code identifying the sectors and sub-sectors where the members operate. Considering the classification codes according to ISTAT, macro-sector categories identified by capital letters (ex. A -Agriculture, forestry and fishing, B -Mineral mining from cave, C -manufacturing, etc.) and sub-sectors identified by the first two numbers of the code (ex. the breakdown of C is: 10 -food; 11 -beverage;…15leather; etc.) the research has provided the following steps.

Firstly we adopted a single entity perspective to understand how the different sectors are represented on the population of 3,360 businesses involved in a network agreement. We compared these data with the incidence of the sectors in the population of total 5,275,515 operating businesses in Italy in order to asses if the collaborative strategy under the new legal framework is affecting the different sectors in the same proportion of the whole production system.

Secondly we moved to a networking perspective focusing on the main characteristics of the 647 CNOs resulting from the data-base in terms of dimension (number of partners) and localization (number of provinces involved). Then we analyzed the sector or the combination of sectors involved in each CNOs, focusing on those agreements that included among the partners at least one company operating in manufacturing. Indeed the literature [START_REF] Cool | Restructuring strategy: new networks and industry challenges[END_REF] shows that the process of re-industrialization goes through a reconfiguration of the operations so that any manufacturing company that contributes to the achievement of common business objectives realizes somehow an innovative process of re-industrialization. Given the characteristics of the knowledge economy and the strategic importance of ICT we then identified those CNOs where a combination of manufacturing and ICT sectors is present. Within this group, finally, it is intended to highlight how many contracts have a geographical distribution of partners in at least at two provinces and therefore can be considered second generation VBE.

Results and Discussion

Highlighting the operating sectors of the over three thousand entities that have formalized a collaboration through the network agreement and comparing them with the distribution by sectors of the population of enterprises in Italy we get the following results (Tab. 2).

The table shows that almost half of the companies involved in networking agreement (42.4%) operate in the manufacturing sector; at lower percentages we find the professional services (11.0%), constructions (9.7%) and wholesale and retail trade (6.4%). It is worthy to note that the business entities in Italy are distributed according to different percentages, presenting an incidence of manufacturing companies involved in networks much higher than their incidence in the whole production system. This results can demonstrate a strong propensity of manufacturing SME's to collaborate, being motivated by the loss of their competitiveness and the need to identify new business opportunities through innovation.

Using the second level of ISTAT classification (sub-sectors) we elaborate a breakdown of manufacturing codes identifying the incidence of the first ten specialization inside the sector (Tab.3). The data shows an homogeneous distribution of the different manufacturing specializations between the business entities involved in network agreement and the whole population of manufacturing entities operating in Italy. This fact can demonstrate a good attitude of the new formal setting based on collaborative strategy to reflect the traditional vocation of Italian specializations reinforcing the strengths and safeguarding the values of entrepreneurial SME's operating in manufacturing industries. Moving to analyze the data-base of agreements adopting a networking perspective we studied the main features of CNOs formalized under the legislative framework defined be Law n. 122/2010, focusing on the dimension (number of partners involved per CNOs) and localization (number of provinces involved per network) as resulting in the following table (Tab. 4). Most of the networks (over 70%) includes from two to five members, representing therefore a form of alliance where the coordination and trust mechanisms tend to affect few partners and the strategic focus can benefit of a concentrated collaborative framework. In terms of localization over 30% of the networks are very geographically characterized, involving only one province and probably reflecting the model of the old industrial districts. However, a significant proportion of network includes members that are localized in two or more provinces, meaning a tendency to build network relations not characterized by territorial proximity that are able to create new space of collaboration over geographically diversified areas. Moving to analyze the industrial features of CNOs formalized through the "network agreement" we considered the combination of different sectors of the partners, focusing on those networks operating in manufacturing (Tab.5). It is worthy to observe that almost two-thirds of the contractual CNOs (69%) includes at least one company that operates in manufacturing; inside this sample approximately the 40% presents over a half of industrial incidence on the alliance.

Focusing on the forms of networking that may have greater potential to successfully start the process of re-industrialization, we search for those networks including the joint presence of companies operating in manufacturing and ICT and we obtained n. 83 CNOs (12.8% on the total). Combining these dimension with the localization perspective we found out n. 71 CNOs Manufacturing & ICT involving more than one provinces that can be considered as second generation of VBE. By analyzing the sectors involved in this set of CNOs (Tab. 6) it is possible to note a high degree of sectors diversification, higher than to the totality of the networks involved in the agreement. This confirms that particularly this type of CNOs can assume a strategic role in the innovative recombination of operations and in the reindustrialization of the Italian economy.

Summary

In the paper a new legal framework named "enterprises' networks agreement", introduced in 2010 by the Italian Government, has been described, and the latest data about the implementation of the new form of collaborative network have been presented. Based on the institutional and theoretical perspective it is possible to argue that the network agreement has been implemented as a strategic tool of industrial policy, able to facilitate the contractual arrangement of the alliances and considered as a vehicle of institutional support to develop the managerial innovations for a new culture of collaboration.

Analyzing the empirical data it can be observed that, since its introduction, the network agreement shows an interesting spread, reaching to December 2012 a total of 647 contracts that involve more than three thousand businesses. This result has already triggered an important innovation process involving all major stakeholders of the Italian economic system (national and regional institutions, business associations, banks, professionals, managers) that are now defining specific measures to stimulate institutional, financial and managerial schemes and tools to support network formation. For this reason, the introduction of the network agreement has certainly achieved the result to define an institutional framework capable of triggering the "leverage" of cultural innovation.

In terms of business performance it is still too early to evaluate the ability of the new formal arrangement to remove the limits of the small size developing the potential benefits of partnerships on liabilities, IP protection and industrial development strategy. Instead, studying the characteristics of the network in terms of sectorial composition, size and geographical location, the paper demonstrates that the contract has the potential to really stimulate re-industrialization and innovation. Results show that manufacturing companies are particularly involved in the formation of the new type of CNO, being the entire sector well represented in each of its specialization (sub-sector). With respect to earlier collaborative forms developed in Italy, like Industrial Districts and Consortia, the new form shows a much higher degree of sectors diversification, and is much less characterized by the geographical concentration, being relevant the number of networks involving different provinces spread over the Italian territory. There are also a number of networks that add to these two characteristics (diversification and de-localization) the joint presence of manufacturing and ICT sectors. The networks of this type are candidates to become the so called '2 nd generation VBE', and seem to have the characteristics to play a relevant role in the reindustrialization of the Italian economy.

  Tab. 4. Dimension and localization of CNOs formalized with the network agreement.

	Dimension of CNOs	Localization of CNOs
	N. of partners		N. of provinces
	involved per "network	%	involved per	%
	agreement"		"network agreement"
	/	/	1	36.1%
	2	15.5%	2	29.3%
	3	25.7%	3	17.1%
	4	19.2%	4	8.2%
	5	11.6%	5	3.6%
	6	3.8%	6	2.6%
	>= 7	24.2%	> =7	3.3%

The "Enterprises' Network Agreement" 469


David Walters
email: david.walters@sydney.edu.au

Jyotirmoyee Bhattacharjya
email: jyotirmoyee.bhattacharjya@sydney.edu.au

Opportunities for Collaboration in the 'Asian Century'

Keywords: network business models, global value chains, collaboration, Asian business models, producibility

The migration of manufacturing into Asia, notably China and India, has been accompanied by varying degrees of concern by western (traditional) businesses. Initially the use of offshoring by high volume/low value manufacturers was seen as a means by which they could remain price competitive; however the more recent moves by Asian manufacturers into the high value/low volume markets has become both an economic and a political issue in what currently is shaping up to be a more serious economic downturn than the "2008/9 GFC". The move towards reshoring has been driven by the equalisation of wage rates in Asia and the softening of labour attitudes in western manufacturing countries, specifically in North America: where recently some runaway plants returned home, and there are some positive economic incentives to encourage more domestic sourcing. The paper discusses the current and future opportunities for Western companies in this scenario and suggests there is scope for collaboration between Asian and Western organisations.

Introduction

In recent years the trend in the global economy has been the "so-called rise" of the economies of many developing countries that were rapidly converging with those of the more developed countries: "The drive behind this phenomenon was the four major emerging-market countries, known as the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The world was witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime shift, the argument went, in which the major players in the developing world were catching up to or even surpassing their counterparts in the developed world" [START_REF] Sharma | Broken BRICs: Why the Rest Stopped Rising[END_REF]. Forecasts of BRICs growth (based upon their growth rates during the middle of the last decade and extended straight into the future) suggested the developing world's high growth rates from the middle of the last decade and extended them straight into the future, juxtaposing them against predicted sluggish growth in the United States and other advanced industrial countries. They suggested the Chinese economy was on the verge of overtaking the United States as the world's largest economy. "Chinese growth is slowing sharply, from double digits down to seven percent or even less. And the rest of the BRICs are tumbling, too: since 2008, Brazil's annual growth has dropped from 4.5 percent to two percent; Russia's, from seven percent to 3.5 percent; and India's, from nine percent to six percent" [START_REF] Sharma | Broken BRICs: Why the Rest Stopped Rising[END_REF]. Sharma [START_REF] Sharma | Broken BRICs: Why the Rest Stopped Rising[END_REF] cites work by Rodrik [START_REF] Rodrik | No More Growth Miracles[END_REF] who has shown that before 2000, the performance of the emerging markets as a whole did not converge with that of the developed world the per capita income gap between the advanced and the developing economies steadily widened from 1950 until 2000. Rodrik suggests that except for the few small countries that benefited from natural-resource bonanzas (notably Brazil and Russia), all of the successful economies of the last six decades owe their growth to rapid industrialization. One thing that is agreed is that Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and China all were efficient at moving their labor from the countryside (or informal activities) to organized manufacturing; but this has changed. Roubini [START_REF] Roubini | The world economy's winners and losers in 2013[END_REF], in an international survey of the 'health' of leading economic blocs and countries reaches similar conclusions reporting; "In China -and in Russia (and partly in Brazil and India) -state capitalism has become more entrenched, which does not bode well for growth. Overall, these four countries (the BRICs) have been over-hyped, and other emerging economies may do better in the next decade: Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia in Asia; Chile, Colombia, and Peru in Latin America; and Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Poland in Eastern Europe and Central Asia".

The Asian Business Model

The Economist identified a number of significant differences between the Asian and Western business models. India's diversified conglomerates have a major impact on industrial activity; for example the Tata Group, with wide spread industrial activities is responsible for some six per cent of the National GDP. Diversified conglomerates widen market base and enhance market power using economies of scale and scope. They offer profit stability by their improving financial performance. Growth counters competitive threats and the access to latest technology is improving quality as well as productivity. The structure of these organisations has facilitated access to funds for growth but this is seen to be becoming problematic and they are looking overseas for acquisitions and funding. [START_REF] Economist | The: Nipping at their heels[END_REF] China's State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) dominate major industries. SOE's have a distinct legal form and they are established to operate in commercial affairs. They may also have public policy objectives. Ideally they are differentiated from other forms of government agencies or other state entities that are established to pursue purely non-financial objectives that have no need or goal of satisfying shareholders with a return on their investment through share price increase or dividends. A number of commentators make the point that the influence of the SOE is declining as policy favours a shift towards the Western stakeholder model. Since the 1980s, the Chinese government and the ruling party have followed a policy of zhengqi fenkai, which formally separates government functions from business operations. The policy has been applied gradually, first to the consumer goods industry, then to high tech and heavy manufacturing, and, more recently, to banking, as officials have attempted to strengthen domestic businesses and the economy to prepare them for unfettered global competition.

East is East and West is West -ne'er the Twain Shall Meet?

Wooldridge [START_REF] Wooldridge | Penguin Specials: State Capitalism -The Invisible Hand: A Special Report from The Economist[END_REF] in a detailed review of Asian management developments identified the emerging differences in Indian and Chinese approaches to business and business models. Successful Indian businesses are predominantly led by entrepreneurial individuals and families; whereas in China Central Government's involvement can be seen. The Wooldridge contribution identifies operational differences between East and West. He identifies Open Innovation; as a contributor to their success; here the emphasis is not on innovation in a western context (new product-services) but more on identifying unfulfilled necessities among the less well off. For example, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has produced a water filter that uses rice husks (which are among the country's most common waste products) to purify water. It is robust, portable and cheap, providing an abundant supply of bacteria-free water for an initial investment of about $24 and a recurring expense of about $4 for a new filter every few months. Tata Chemicals, which is making the devices, is planning to produce one million over the next year and hopes for an eventual market of 100million people. Frugal/Reverse innovation: General Electric's a hand-held electrocardiogram is small enough to fit into a small backpack and can run on batteries as well as on the mains sells for $800, instead of $2,000.

The Asian business model has identified opportunities to apply mass production to sophisticated services; at 1,000-bed Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital, Dr Devi Shetty's surgeons operate at a capacity virtually unheard of in the U.S. The approach has transformed health care in India through a simple premise that works in other industries: economies of scale. The application of dispersed manufacturing is well established; geographically dispersed customers in both emerging and established global markets now demand higher quality products in a greater variety and at lower cost in a shorter time. Furthermore, also as product profit margins continue to shrink, organisations reorganize their activities and realign their strategies to provide the speed and flexibility necessary to respond to windows of market opportunity; moving from centralised, vertically integrated, single-site manufacturing facilities to geographically dispersed networks of resources. The more recent moves by Asian manufacturers into the high value/low volume markets has become both an economic and a political issue in what currently is shaping up to be a more serious economic downturn than the "2008/9 GFC. Hybrid manufacturing models (a combination of advanced manufacturing technology with traditional production processes) are being introduced by large manufacturing organisations, this development changes the competitive environment between East and West, and however, the impact is unlikely to be seen for some time.

Government activity has had a strong influence. For example China uses selective interest rates for loans to industries it selects for growth together with industry subsidy support strategies. Managed exchange rate flexibility has provided an export advantage for manufactured products and inter-government currency exchanges create favourable trade terms on a selected basis.

Or Can They?

The recent move towards reshoring has increased a number of reasons suggesting this is a strategic response not a short-term operational reaction aimed at cost containment. Prominent among these are the increasing wage rates in Asian manufacturing together with increasing energy costs, particularly oil prices with a huge impact on transportation costs. To these should be added the advances in robotics specifically the impact of the increased flexibility of robotics; robot technology has resulted in "multi-skilled' robots now capable of being multi-tasked resulting in flexible manufacturing techniques offering lower operating costs and the ability to reduce the response time to customer demand.

Organisational structures have also moved on. Industries and organisations have also undergone significant changes.

McKinsey [START_REF]Manufacturing the future: The next era of global growth and innovation[END_REF] highlighted recently in "Manufacturing the Future". While the developed countries will continue to increase their share of global production, the impact of Asian manufacturing will be significant. Although some manufacturing is returning to America and Europe from locations where it had been offshored, such as China, this trend will not recreate all the factory jobs that once existed. Two reasons support this claim: one is the application of robotics (becoming increasingly flexible and less expensive) and secondly the lack of skilled labour in the developed economies will be an increasing problem. There is potential here for competition in the high value/low volume sector markets to intensify; however ideally both Western and Asian interests should be seeking solutions that involve collaboration rather competition.

There are a number of reasons to suggest a structured network organisation could work. The synergy that would result from the product and process innovation that an 'East-meets-West' business model could increase the value returned to all stakeholders. Furthermore, an increased emphasis on producibility a measure of the combined outputs of profitability, productivity and resources mix management using total cost analysis (TCA) is currently being used by a number of large organisations is resulting in optimised decisions; these typically involve a mixture of offshore and onshore activities. TCA is being increasingly applied to evaluate the 'total cost' implications of manufacturing options; such as all of the associated logistics and supply chain management costs, including qualitative 'what if' scenarios concerning control off offshore operations; these decisions often resulting in decisions favouring re-investment in domestic production. An example of TCA at work is provided by Cue a medium size ladies wear retailer in Australia. Cue has analysed its value proposition and 'manufactures' its core range of products (60/70 per cent) in Australia; the remaining merchandise is sourced from Asia. This is because Cue requires short lead times (3/4 weeks) to maintain customer interest and to avoid excess inventory levels and a high quality, complex, product to meet customer expectations; Asian manufacturers cannot meet these requirements. However the remaining 40/30 per cent are sourced from Asia.

Facilitators: The Value Chain Network Model

Marsh [START_REF] Marsh | The New Industrial Revolution[END_REF] and others (e.g., [START_REF] Porter | Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance[END_REF], [START_REF] Normann | From Value Chain to Value Constellation: Designing Interactive Strategy[END_REF], [START_REF] Walters | Managing in the Value Chain Network[END_REF]) have commented upon the flexibility of the value chain network. Marsh qualifies the value chain network as innovative with; "… in the early years of the twenty-first century, the realization grew that making products is just one part of the 'value chain' of company operations. Others include design and development, and the way products are maintained or 'serviced' after installation. To be considered a great manufacturer, companies do not need to make anything, even though they will almost certainly know a lot about what this entails. Increasingly, elements of the value chain are being left to a variety of businesses in different countries. The management of this mix is becoming a highly prized skill. Marsh predicts that; " as the new industrial revolution proceeds, the connections will become denser, more complex and more susceptible to sudden shifts in technology or market forces … The fragmentation of activities will become greater as more businesses in different countries find they can participate".

Production processes of technology are undergoing dynamic change and can meet this challenge (for example; the digitisation of manufacturing, continuous manufacturing, additive manufacturing, and flexible manufacturing) offering opportunities for global partnerships to western countries from designing and manufacturing innovative components (and introducing innovative processes) across a number of industries. The value chain network model is sufficiently robust to undertake this task. Currently the focus of value chain management is on coordinated value adding activities based upon consumer centricity. However there is evidence to suggest a new generation of value chain thinking that is becoming based upon marketcentric networks; large organisations such as General Electric, ABB, Millenium (a Bio Tech/Pharmaceutical organisation), and Siemens are pursuing strategies of entering new growth markets (such as renewable energy, life sciences/ biotechnology and medical devices) and are being innovative in how they compete by collaborating with local organisations using local resources creating networks structured around mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. These organisations been active in the M&A sector building global networks of RD&D, manufacturing and marketing capabilities that are typically local-market based, that are able to be product-service specific, manufacture locally (avoiding foreign exchange problems) and use local distribution networks. For example, General Electric has established RD&D Centres in a number of Asian countries and is pursuing opportunities in these and global emerging markets and is using innovative process management as its strategy of "frugal" innovation suggests.

The expansion of global value chains has changed some views on how productivity should be measured. This is because a product may not only be worked upon across a range of organisations, each adding value as it leaves their premises; but it may cross a number of international borders where there may or may not be taxation payments that distorts the vendor/purchaser price and therefore the added value. The McKinsey Report [START_REF]Manufacturing the future: The next era of global growth and innovation[END_REF] segmented global industries by identifying value adding intensities by manufacturing components. It demonstrates that the industries: global innovation for local markets (34 per cent of global manufacturing added value); regional processing (28 per cent of global manufacturing added value); regional processing) energy/resource intensive commodities (22 per cent of global manufacturing added value); global technologies/innovators (9 per cent of global manufacturing added value); and labour intensive tradeables (7 per cent of global manufacturing added value), each require varying levels of input expertise. It follows that any organisation or perhaps country would identify where, in this context, its capabilities and expertise can best be utilised and in this way plan around these to enhance productivity across the network of a global value chain.

Facilitator: The Factory of the Future

The forgoing suggests some major structural changes in the notion of what manufacturing is, what it is, and how it operates. Barkai and Manenti [START_REF] Barkai | The Assembly Plant of the Future, Industry Week[END_REF] argue that current market trends require the future production environment to be highly adaptable and reconfigurable to respond to rapid changes in market demand, technology innovation and changing regulations.

Flexible manufacturing technologies employed by most automakers are a critical ability in this process and the foundation for profitable growth, but these alone will not suffice in a long term strategy to fend off the competition. The authors suggest a practical "design anywhere, make anywhere, sell anywhere" strategy is needed, and propose, arguing that: "Factories of the future will be a global network of production facilities managed as single virtual factory. This type of manufacturing network consolidates multiple resources and capabilities to form an end-to-end fulfillment network that we call fulfillment execution system (FES)."

Barkai and Manenti [START_REF] Barkai | The Assembly Plant of the Future, Industry Week[END_REF] argue that current market trends require the future production environment to be highly adaptable and reconfigurable to respond to rapid changes in market demand, technology innovation and changing regulations. Flexible manufacturing technologies employed by most automakers are a critical ability in creating collaborative competitive advantage and the foundation for profitable growth and can be designed with resources management as an objective. The authors suggest a practical "design anywhere, make anywhere, sell anywhere" strategy is needed, and propose, arguing that the FES (fulfillment execution system) is an approach to a coordinated management of demand, capacity and resources, and outbound order fulfillment across the entire network of manufacturing plants and along the value creation chain. Data gathered will be connected to corporate-level intelligent decision support tools, creating visibility and intelligence on operational data. It enables manufacturers identify problems, isolate root causes, understand the state of execution processes, and adopt corrective actions quickly across multiple plants. IDC Manufacturing Insights Predictions [12] introduced Global Plant Floor model following much the same approach: a network of factories, managed as a unique virtual factory that consolidates the number of different manufacturing plants in terms of resources, processes, and products with the ability to harmonize, supervise and coordinate execution activities across company's and suppliers' manufacturing operations, with greater level of real-time visibility; and, with Centres of Operational Excellence and plant-floor IT seen as essential to this transformation. Together these concepts propose a coordinated international multi-plant operation that may located anywhere by using ICT facilities.

"Producibility" and the Global Value Chain: Opportunities for Collaboration

Producibility is a total design activity that includes all relevant activities within the value chain network and creates intra and inter-organisational partnerships by applying total cost analysis to evaluate an optimal structure to achieve end-user satisfaction. It is a management process whereby the product-service design process is integrated with the manufacturing process in an attempt building strategic effectiveness into the value proposition by integrating both design and manufacturing processes to achieve production efficiency (i. e; manufacturing business model, quality specifications, volume and delivery targets at target costs and commercial prices), (Boothroyd et al [START_REF] Boothroyd | Automatic Assembly[END_REF]). However to be an effective network model the concept requires expansion:

Producibility is the total design activity that includes all relevant activities within the value chain network and creates intra and inter-organisational partnerships to achieve stakeholder satisfaction. It is a management process whereby the product-service-design process is integrated with the design of manufacturing processes and the subsequent the operational processes of physical distribution and service support management. Clearly not all of the activities need to be performed by any one organisation; but given the assets, capabilities and capacities of current and potential network members, together with the end-user expectations, it is now possible to design the productservice, the manufacturing processes, the physical distribution processes, and the maintenance service activities concurrently. By identifying the 'value-added intensity profiles' within each network member it is possible to construct industry value-adding chains [START_REF]Manufacturing the future: The next era of global growth and innovation[END_REF]. A producibility-approach makes a structured -value -adding chain possible. This is becoming economically viable with the contributions of Barkai and Manenti [START_REF] Barkai | The Assembly Plant of the Future, Industry Week[END_REF], the Fulfilment Execution System (FES) and IDC Manufacturing Insights' Global Plant Floor model introduced in 2012 [12]. Together these concepts propose a coordinated international multi-plant operation that may located anywhere by using ICT facilities.

Concluding Comments

Producibility is not new it has a number of precedents; value engineering, value analysis, and design for manufacturing assembly, to name a few. Examples can be found, the four lane strategy of Caterpillar embraces producibility principles as do the frugal/constrained innovation strategies of General Electric [START_REF] Immelt | How GE is disrupting itself[END_REF] and of Panasonic [START_REF] Wakabayashi | Panasonic downsizes product design and price to fit emerging markets[END_REF]. However this paper suggests an extension of Boothroyd et al.'s original model to include distribution and service activities within the concept. Adopting producibility introduces: operational processes that participate in building strategic effectiveness into the value proposition; integrated design, manufacturing and distribution processes to achieve operational efficiency (i.e., the manufacturing business model, quality specifications, volume and delivery targets at target costs) and; the inclusion of the commercial business model (physical distribution, resale (end-user access) availability and 'serviceability') designed into the total product-service package. The developments of ICT (information communications technologies) are now able to combine the innovative expertise and operational efficiencies of both East and Western business models provided the political will is applied to make it happen.


Salvatore Ammirato
email: salvatore.ammirato@unical.it

Alberto Michele Felicetti
email: alberto.felicetti@unical.it

The Potential of Agritourism in Revitalizing Rural Communities: Some Empirical Results

Keywords: Agritourism, rural network, agritourism rural network, rural community, sustainability, Calabria

Modern patterns of rural development propose a rational and respectful exploitation of agricultural resources together with the rediscovery of historical and naturalistic heritage as means to reach sustainable development. In this sense, Agritourism represents the contact point between the tourists' request of wellbeing, genuineness and rediscovery of nature, and the offer of typical agricultural products and touristic services of a network of rural organizations. The aim of this study is to improve our understanding of how agritourism activities can contribute to revitalize rural communities; the study assumes particular importance in a period of economic crisis characterized by the failure of the traditional patterns of rural development. We present key findings of an explorative survey carried out in the Calabria region, Italy, during 2012 on a sample of 52 farms offering agritourism activities. The study deploys an original methodology aimed to highlight the extent of the agritourism phenomena in the selected region and to evaluate how agritourism can support sustainable development of a rural community becoming the hub of an "agritourism rural network"

Introduction

The question of rural development has been long addressed by the scientific community [START_REF] Leon | Rural development in Europe: a research frontier for agricultural economists[END_REF] [START_REF] Murdoch | Networks -a new paradigm of rural development?[END_REF]. Rural development can be defined in general terms as "an overall increase in the welfare of the residents of rural areas and, more generally, as the contribution that rural resources offer to the welfare of the entire rural population" [START_REF] Hodge | The scope and context of rural development[END_REF]. The concept of rural development is becoming increasingly complex, going beyond the boundaries of the economic sphere and leading to a growing emphasis on the not overexploitation of natural resources and landscape, as well as on the rediscovery and valorization of existing tangible (infrastructure, monuments, typical foods, etc…) and intangible assets (culture heritage, traditions, history). Scholars group such patterns into the concept of "sustainable development", asserting the importance to involve local actors in common development pathways [START_REF] Allen | Integrating social, environmental, and economic issues in sustainable agriculture[END_REF] [START_REF] Ammirato | Tourism Breeding Environment: forms and levels of collaboration in the tourism sector[END_REF].

In the effort to gain sustainable development, farmers and other organizations have started organizing themselves spontaneously in rural networks in order to solve their problems and those of rural communities. New and alternative business models have developed with the aim to guarantee competitive advantages, to improve farm revenue streams, to return in taking an active role in the agrifood system, and to develop new consumer market niches [START_REF] Volpentesta | Networking agrifood SMEs and consumer groups in local agribusiness. Pro-VE'08: Pervasive Collaborative Networks[END_REF]. Such models are known as Alternative AgriFood Networks, AAFNs [START_REF] Volpentesta | Knowledge exchange and social learning opportunities in direct agri-food chains[END_REF], which are collaborative networks in the agrifood sector characterized by a re-connection among producers and consumers with these explicit ethical and political goals: "re-vitalisation of territory identity and rural community relations to local food and agriculture, linking with sustainable agriculture, economically viable and socially responsible practices" [START_REF] Volpentesta | Alternative Agrifood Networks in a regional area: a case study[END_REF].

In this work we aim to deepen the understanding of the Agritourism phenomenon and evaluate its potential as a model for the sustainable development of rural communities. In details, the paper is organized as follows. In section 2 the theoretical background of the study is summarized in order to have a fully understanding of the survey whose methodology is reported in section 3. Survey results and discussion are present in section 4 followed by conclusion in section 5.

Theoretical Background

In the last decades, rural communities have been invested from deep changes consisting mainly in the shift of economic activities and population to urban areas and in the loss of significance of the agricultural sector as the most important sector in terms of production, wealth and number of employees. These phenomena brought a crisis in traditional structure and organization of rural areas, exposing them to the risk of a economic, social and environmental decline, that involved agricultural sector as well as the entire local economy and rural communities as a whole [START_REF] Volpentesta | Enabling Virtual Organizations in a Technological District[END_REF] [START_REF] Ilbery | Forecasting supply chain developments in lagging rural regions[END_REF]. From the producers side, farmers are continuously looking for "new ways" of doing business, exploring the viability of alternative economic strategies [START_REF] Mcgehee | Motivation for agri-tourism entrepreneurship[END_REF]. According to [START_REF] Van Der Ploeg | Rural development: The state of the art[END_REF], the main questions for farmers still remains "How, why, to what extent and under what conditions can the combination of activities within a rural enterprise positively affect costs, benefits, risks and prospects?".

From the consumers side, the increasing demands for quality safe, healthy and ethically correct food, led to a widening consensus that conventional agriculture is no more sustainable and radical changes are needed [START_REF] Watts | Making Alternative systems of food provision[END_REF]. New organizational networks, based on processes of synergic collaboration, between farmers, consumers and other rural actors emerged in recent years in order to propose solutions for the rural community question [START_REF] Ammirato | Tourism Breeding Environment: forms and levels of collaboration in the tourism sector[END_REF][8][14] [START_REF] Corvello | Evaluating technological innovations: A method based on comparable transactions[END_REF]. Problems are better understood when analysed from different perspectives, thus a collection of differently skilled actors can, in principle, go beyond individual knowledge and reach new solutions for the whole community's questions [START_REF] Volpentesta | Collaborative design learning and thinking style awareness[END_REF][17] [18][19]. Various studies [START_REF] Higgins | Building alternative agrifood networks: Certification, embeddedness and agrienvironmental governance[END_REF] [START_REF] Volpentesta | Evaluating e-commerce web interfaces of agri-food SMEs in an European lagging behind region[END_REF], state that farmers might be able to realize their expectations by shortening long and complex agrifood supply chains and by embedding high "typical and quality" features, strictly linked to local agrifood products, within their production processes. AAFNs give farmers a direct means to increase their revenues by reducing intermediaries along the supply chain as well as the opportunity to strengthen relationship with consumers, by offering "personal" quality guarantees on products [START_REF] Mcgehee | Motivation for agri-tourism entrepreneurship[END_REF] [START_REF] Higgins | Building alternative agrifood networks: Certification, embeddedness and agrienvironmental governance[END_REF]. AAFN paradigm is strictly interconnected with relocalization principles which are seen as a way to reinvigorate rural communities, reducing producers' dependence on subsidies and increase agricultural competitiveness [START_REF] Clemens | Keeping farmers on the land: Adding value in agriculture in the Veneto Region of Italy[END_REF]. Relocalization is characterized by the rediscovery of local traditions and environmental and cultural heritage as means of improving well-being, authenticity, and, in a more general sense, quality of life. Rural communities development concept goes beyond the boundaries of the economic sphere and leads to a growing emphasis on the exploitation of natural resources and landscape, as well as a rediscovery of tangible and intangible resources. In this sense, rural communities can look at "tourism" as an opportunity to diversify the economy and revitalize rural areas [START_REF] Weaver | The vacation farm sector in Saskatchewan: A profile of operations[END_REF] [24].

Agritourism and Rural Networks

From an organizational point of view, a rural community is characterized by different autonomous entities (people and organization) that live and operate in a rural area, i.e. areas with poor infrastructure, far from major urban areas, and characterized by economic and cultural backwardness [START_REF] Ilbery | Forecasting supply chain developments in lagging rural regions[END_REF]. These entities aim to achieve the common goal of sustainable local development in order to increase their general competitiveness in a larger area. A rural community can be viewed as a Breeding Environment, BE [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | The role of collaborative networks in sustainability[END_REF], characterized by shared principles, infrastructures and culture, where networking and cooperation is practiced among their members. Within a rural community it is possible to identify particular kinds of Collaborative Networks [START_REF] Ammirato | Alternative Agrifood Networks as Learning Communities: Some Issues for a Classification model[END_REF], the Rural Networks, which are particular AAFNs whose members are not only agrifood producers, but also suppliers of touristic service, craftsmen, artists, local public administrations, etc. who want exploit advantages of AAFNs and relocalization offering tourists to experience rural tourism while tasting/buying local agrifood products. Members of a rural network are a subset of the rural community actors that establish long term and structured collaboration relationships and align their actions, interests, resources and goals, in order exploit business opportunities arising from direct and not-mediated connections with customers. In this paper we introduce the concept of Agritourism Rural Network considering agritourism as a farm activity able to give sustainable development to rural communities. Agritourism farm represents the hub of a rural network, the place where agrifood products and tourism services meet consumers demand for relocalization, the trigger to motivate further direct business opportunities between tourists and other rural community actors.

Agritourism is a widely debated topic in the scientific literature. According to the Italian legislative system, which acknowledges the European Union directives, the agritourism is exclusively defined as "tourism activities exercised by farmers through the exploitation of their own farm according to a logic of "connection", "complementarity" and "non-prevalence" [START_REF] Legge | Disciplina dell'agriturismo[END_REF]. In the scientific literature the term "agritourism" is often understood in a wide sense as a synonym for "farm tourism", "farm-based tourism", and "rural tourism. All these definitions present a common point in the rural/agricultural context in which services are provided [START_REF] Karabati | Socio-Economic Effects of Agri-Tourism on Local Communities in Turkey: The Case of Aglasun[END_REF] [START_REF] Marques | Searching for complementarities between agriculture and tourism[END_REF]. Many authors utilize the term "working farm" where tourism services are provided besides traditional agricultural activities. In our intent, rural tourism refers simply to tourism services provided in a rural context, while agritourism refers to "tourism services provided by agricultural entrepreneurs within their own farm, allowing also visitors to take part, directly or indirectly, in agricultural activities" [START_REF] Phillip | A typology for defining agritourism[END_REF]. In particular, agritourism farm may offer services as hospitality, meal provision, farm tour, on-site processing of agricultural goods, pick-your-own activities and so on. In [START_REF] Mcgehee | An Agritourism Systems Model: A Weberian Perspective[END_REF] authors emphasize the dual role of agritourism for both individual "actors" (rural tourism operators, intermediaries in the tourism sector and visitors) and rural community as a whole. In fact, agritourism farms serve as a stimulus for other local activities (agrifood producers, crafts, restaurants, shops), as well as contributing to the preservation of customs and the local culture [START_REF] Wilson | The role of agritourism in Western states: place specific and policy factors influencing recreational income for producers[END_REF]. In those rural communities where members actively collaborate with farmers in their arrangement of agritourism services provision, we can observe the rise of an agritourism rural network.

The Survey

In this section we propose some results of an exploratory survey conducted among farms of a rural region with the aim to understand if and how farmers and rural actors, exploit agritourism potentials as a means to revitalize the rural community. Moreover, we aim to highlight the presence of agritourism rural networks in the surveyed region where rural actors operate together with agritourism farms for the sustainable development of the rural community.

Research Questions

The research questions can be defined as follow: RQ1: Do farmers understand the importance of setting agritourism activities within their farm? RQ2: Can the agritourism farm be a direct contact point between the rural community offer of products/services and the tourist request for relocalization?

• Do farmers offer tourists possibilities to enjoy the cultural and/or naturalistic heritage of the region? When such possibilities are offered, do tourists enjoy them? • Do farmers offer tourists possibilities to taste and buy typical local agrifood products of the region? When such possibilities are offered, do tourists enjoy them? RQ3: Is it possible to highlight the presence of an agritourism rural network in supporting the activities of the agritourism farm?

• In their products and services offer, do farmers act in formal cooperation with other suppliers of the rural networks? • Which is the percentage of products or services sold through the agritourism farm that is supplied by local firms/associations? • Are there any long-term supply contracts with such firms/associations? • How many local workers are engaged by the farm exclusively to carry out the agritourism activities?

Methodology

The methodology is designed to address the research questions and can be applied to all regions being studied. The methodology is made up of the following steps:

step 1: determine the overall number of agribusiness in the region, and how many of them are officially authorized to offer an agritourism experience and are currently active. The set of such agritourism farms constitutes the population of interest for our analysis.

step 2: Definition of a questionnaire to be delivered to the managers of the agritourism farms within the population of interest. Responses to the questionnaire will be analyzed to answer the research questions.

step 3: Delivery of the questionnaire to the farms' managers and gathering of their filled forms. The set of agritourism farms whose managers filled the questionnaire constitutes the sample of the analysis.

step 4: Analysis of the managers' responses of the sample in order to answer the research questions and discussion.

Survey Results and Discussion

The proposed methodology has been applied to the agritourism farms located in the Calabria region (Italy) and has been carried out from 01 October 2012 to 31 December 2012. Calabria is a "lagging behind region" (i.e., a European Union region with per capita GDP, measured in purchasing power parties, less than 75% of the Community average [START_REF] Ilbery | Forecasting supply chain developments in lagging rural regions[END_REF]) with a population density of less than 150 inhabitants per square kilometers and whose endemic problems are broadly characterized by geographical remoteness, low population density, low income levels, limited employment opportunities, dependency on agriculture, poor service provision, and poor development capacities [START_REF] Istat | Sixth General Census of Agriculture in Italy[END_REF].

In line with step 1 of the methodology, the population of interest, P, of our analysis was selected using an official agritourism database directly purchased from the Italian Chambers of Commerce. The "Regional agritourism farms registry" at the office of the Regional Department of Agriculture was used as a cross reference to validate the selections. We surveyed that the number of Calabrian farms offering some forms of agritourism experience is rapidly increasing in few years; the number of new authorized agritourism activities in the period 2005-2010 presented a grow rate of 56% (from 313 to 488) while the Italian national rate was 26% in the same period (from 15.327 to 19.304) [START_REF] Mcgehee | An Agritourism Systems Model: A Weberian Perspective[END_REF]. In particular, at the end of 2010, on 137.790 agribusinesses present in Calabria, only 488 (0.35%) (0.26 % in 2005) were authorized and active in agritourism; so P is made up of 488 agritourism farms [START_REF] Mcgehee | An Agritourism Systems Model: A Weberian Perspective[END_REF].

According to step 2, a questionnaire was set up containing 10 questions, all designed to answer the research questions. For each farms belonging to P, we tried to have a phone meeting with the managers in order to deliver the questionnaire. On 488 agritourism farms in P, 52 of them , the 10.6%, agreed to answer the questionnaire.

After a telephonic interview with the farm managers, we gathered their responses; at the end of step 3 the final sample was made up of 52 farms. According to step 4, for each of the farms in the sample, we analyzed the gathered responses and statistical results of the analysis are reported in the next section.

To answer RQ1, we can put in contrast quantitative results from official statistical data and qualitative results from our survey. First data point out that few are the Agritourism farms in Calabria (488), especially in relative terms on the overall number of agribusiness activities in the region (0.35%) and to analogous rates in other Italian regions (4.2% of Tuscany's farms and 11.27% of Trentino Alto Adige's farms) [START_REF] Mcgehee | An Agritourism Systems Model: A Weberian Perspective[END_REF]. Looking at the statistical analysis of questionnaires in the sample, 38% of respondents affirmed that over half of the overall farm's yearly turnover come from the agritourism activities, while 29% declared that the rate of turnover coming from agritourism activities is between 20% and 50%. Overall, 67% of respondents declared that more than 20% of the farm's yearly turnover come from agritourism activities. Looking at the costs side, 21% of respondents declared that more than 50% of the farm's costs come from the agritourism activities, while 23% declared that the rate of costs ascribed to the agritourism activities is between 20% and 50%. Overall, 44% of respondents stated that the rate of total agribusiness costs ascribed to the agritourism activities is more than 20%. Moreover, 51% of respondents affirm the will to increase the investments in the agritourism activities in the following year, with respect to the previous year, while only 8% of them want to reduce the investments.

The small number of agritourism farms present in Calabria, suggests that we cannot positively answer to RQ1. Anyway, the rapid increase of the new authorized agritourism activities in the last few years (+56% in the period 2005-2010) point out that the awareness about the importance of setting an agritourism activity within the farm is spreading among farmers of the regions. Such awareness is strengthened by statistical data from the survey which highlight the economical positive results reported by agribusiness where agritourism activities are present and the generalized will of sampled agribusiness to continue invest and, in many cases, to increase the investments. Positive feedback stated from the surveyed farms can be an important reason to motivate other farmers in doing the same and it can help to explain the rapid growth rate of new authorized activities in Calabria.

To answer RQ2, we identify some activities that let tourists enjoy the cultural and/or naturalistic heritage of the region as well as taste and/or buy typical agrifood products of the region. For each activity, we asked respondents to state if such activity was present in their agritourism offer and, in case of positive answer, to indicate the percentage of their customers who purchased /enjoyed it in the previous year. Results from the statistical analysis point out that surveyed farms intend agritourism mainly as a means to:

• let tourists enjoy services within the property of the farm (overnight accommodation offered by 84,62% of respondents and purchased by 34,58% of their customers, and educational farm, offered by 44,23% of respondents and purchased by 19% of their customers) or, at the most, visits to touristic places at free entrance (offered by 51,92% of respondents and enjoyed by 45,28% of their customers);

• taste/buy/cook self-produced food (offered by 65,38% / 71,15% / 94,23% of respondents, enjoyed by, respectively, 55% / 17% / 84,63% of their customers). So we cannot give positive answer to RQ2, highlighting that agritourism is still intended by farmers only as a means to sell products/services self-produced. At the same time, the rural community is not able to exploit the presence of agritourism farms as direct contacts point with the tourists intended as potential customers.

To answer RQ3, is important to note that statistical analysis of responses in the sample point out that: • 40% of respondents declared they have some kinds of formal cooperation with other actors of the rural network • 12% of respondents declared that more than 20% of the agrifood products utilized in their agritourism activities come from other actors of the rural network; 61% stated that less than 20% of the agrifood products they utilized in their agritourism farms come from other local actors. Only 27% stated they utilized only agrifood products self-produced. Overall, 71% of respondents utilize products supplied from the rural network. • 67% of respondents who utilize products supplied from the rural network, affirmed to have long-term and stable supply contracts with the other actors of the rural networks; • on average, almost 5 local workers are engaged by the farm exclusively to carry out the agritourism activities. Data show the emergence of real agritourism rural networks in Calabria. Rural community benefits from the agritourism presence mainly for agrifood producers, which receive direct benefits from long-term contract, and local workers, who are directly engaged for the agritourism services offered to tourists. Less diffused are connections with non-food producers local partners.

Conclusions

Agritourism activities, even if not so diffused among Calabrian farms, give farmers important revenues being an alternative way for selling farms' products and services. The reason because rural community does not fully exploit benefits from direct connections with agritourism customers remains unclear: is the community that cannot understand potentials of this connection or is it a lack of entrepreneurial farsightedness among agritourism farmers? Yet, direct contacts between agritourists and rural community actors can benefit both the agritourism farm and the rural community.

Anyway, stable rural networks exist within the orbit of the Calabrian agritourism farms. Data analysis picture the most diffused agritourism rural network model in Calabria as so characterized:

• the agritourism farm represents the rural network hub, the contact point between rural network offer and tourists/customers demand.

• Local suppliers, through their long-term contracts with the farm, offer agritourists their goods and services having an indirect contact with them (mediated by the farm). Such provisions contributes to enrich and complete the basket of rural offer to the tourists. • Local workers benefit from employment opportunities at the farm site.

Even if this survey is the first of its kind, results are encouraging in supporting our hunches about the importance of setting agritourism activities, both for farms and for the rural community, as a means to revitalize the rural communities.


Valentina Boschian
email: valentina.boschian@bluegreenstrategy.com

Paolo Paganelli
email: paolo.paganelli@bluegreenstrategy.com

The Evolution of Business Models within a Business Ecosystem for Cooperative Logistic

Keywords: value creation, business models, ecosystem, value chain, logistics networks

The aim of this paper consists in presenting a new approach in studying the evolution of the business models of the categories of business actors belonging to a business Ecosystem focused on co-modal logistics networks. Each type of actors is pursuing its own value system on the basis of the key elements that identify and characterize the nature of its activities and business. The focus of the business models is on the key elements that characterize the value-creation links between the involved actors in the Value Chain. The paper focuses on broadening and exploring the traditional concepts of business models showing their evolution when considering the future business environment. To perform this analysis, a template, recalling the wellknown approach by Osterwalder, is proposed, discussed and applied to systematically consider alternative approaches to value creation in terms of reference business models.

Introduction

The analysis and the study of issues related to business models is widely addressed in literature, [START_REF] Göthlich | Underlying Principles of Business Ecosystems[END_REF], [START_REF] Johnson | Reinventing Your Business Model[END_REF], [START_REF] Osterwalder | The Business Model Ontology. A Proposition in a Design Science Approach[END_REF], [START_REF] Osterwalder | Clarifying Business Models: Origins, Present, and Future of the Concept[END_REF], [START_REF] Shafer | The power of business models[END_REF], but it is always a very up-to-date topic, since, even if it is extensively investigated in the past and recent years and several definitions are available in literature, the application of business models as a conceptual tool was not as clearly defined in practice as might have been hoped.

In such context, this paper aims at presenting an innovative approach to study the evolution of the business models of the categories of business actors belonging to a business ecosystem focused on co-modal logistics networks. Each type of actors, being part of a business ecosystem as an intentional community of economic actors whose individual business activities share to a large extent the fate of the whole community, [START_REF] Moore | Predators and prey: a new ecology of competition[END_REF], [START_REF] Moore | The Death of Competition: Leadership & Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems[END_REF], [START_REF] Moore | Business ecosystems and the view from the firm[END_REF], is pursuing its own value system on the basis of the key elements that identify and characterize the nature of its activities and business.

The use of the concept of business model increased dramatically during the rise of the so-called 'digital economy' period in the 1990s when companies were actively seeking new ways of doing business. The business model concept offers managers a coherent way to consider their options in uncertain and fast-moving environments [START_REF] Mcgrath | Business Models: A Discovery Driven Approach[END_REF].

A business model of a company can be seen as an essential locus of innovation, and has the potential to disrupt existing industry structures, [START_REF] Amit | Value Creation in e-Business[END_REF], [START_REF] Teece | Business Models, Business Strategy and Innovation[END_REF], [START_REF] Markides | Competing With Dual Business Models: A Contingency Approach[END_REF]. Business models can also be used as an analytical tool for the description of business activities of a company, [START_REF] Sinfield | How to identify New Business Models[END_REF]. Business models help in getting everyone in the organization aligned in producing the kind of value the company wants to create. Therefore, the concept has an enormous practical value, [START_REF] Magretta | Why Business Models Matter[END_REF]. A business model is a holistic concept, which embraces elements such as pricing mechanisms, customer relationships, partnering and revenue sharing [START_REF] Osterwalder | The Business Model Ontology. A Proposition in a Design Science Approach[END_REF], [START_REF] Osterwalder | Clarifying Business Models: Origins, Present, and Future of the Concept[END_REF]. Business models can be seen as focusing on the activity-system side of how a firm creates economic value, [16].

The focus of the business models is on the key elements that characterize the value-creation links between the involved actors in the value chain. Hence, these elements are identified, explored and structured to find out the business model the fit at best the needs of the three main categories of actors. At a conceptual level, a business model includes all aspects of a company's approach to developing a profitable offering and delivering it to its target customers. Research conducted in the last ten years, [START_REF] Seddon | The Case for Viewing Business Models as Abstractions of Strategy[END_REF], has established a link between business model innovation and value creation. This research points to the need for organizations to build a competency in business model innovation exploring possible business model alternatives.

Starting from this assumption, the goal of the analysis is to present a new approach that treats business models as a variable and not a constant element. For this purpose, we explore the concept of a business model by addressing the several core questions that the majority of business model researchers deal within their models, but we do not consider that, as it is done usually, [START_REF] Seddon | The Case for Viewing Business Models as Abstractions of Strategy[END_REF], the answers to these questions are fixed, and we investigate the new opportunities can be captured by taking into account variable answers to these questions that form the essence of business model evolution.

This work contributes to the project iCargo, [START_REF]iCargo Deliverable D1.3 -iCargo Vision[END_REF], Intelligent Cargo in Efficient and Sustainable Global Logistics Operations, sponsored by the European Commission under the 7 th Framework Program and aiming at advancing and extending the use of Information and Communication Technology, ICT, to support cooperation between specialized business actors to offer competitive and efficient door-to-door logistic solutions. The paper applies this novel methodology to find out how the iCargo ecosystem modifies the current business scenario and market. In this way we will be able to highlight the impact of iCargo not just as an enabler of operational improvements on the current business, but as a support infrastructure for new value proposition and new ways of cooperation in the logistics market. The iCargo Project is founded on the assumption that interoperable supply chains, including connected intelligent cargo and vehicles, cannot materialize as a result of incremental innovations in individual functional areas or single technology components. Instead, a comprehensive and coordinated stakeholder driven approach is needed, involving multidisciplinary research and development in ICT, co-modal transport networks and strategic management.

The paper is organized as follows: Chapter 2 introduces and defines the core concepts related to the iCargo ecosystem and Reference Value Chain; Chapter 3 describes the proposed approach, Chapter 4 presents the main results obtained by applying the proposed methodology in the iCargo ecosystem and finally Chapter 6 concludes the paper and presents the next steps.

The iCargo Reference Value Chain

The iCargo Integrated Project aims at advancing and extending the use of ICT to support new logistics services, [START_REF]iCargo Deliverable D1.3 -iCargo Vision[END_REF], that: (i) synchronize vehicle movements and logistics operations across various modes and actors to lower CO 2 emissions, (ii) adapt to changing conditions through dynamic planning methods involving intelligent cargo, vehicle and infrastructure systems and (iii) combine services, resources and information from different stakeholders, taking part in an open freight management ecosystem. In the iCargo vision the logistic industry will evolve into a business ecosystem [START_REF] Iansiti | Strategy as ecology[END_REF], [START_REF] Moore | Predators and prey: a new ecology of competition[END_REF], where specialized actors obtain environmental and economic benefits by combining their resources and capabilities.

The iCargo ecosystem is constituted of business communities sharing a common framework, and a semantic enhanced ICT infrastructure supporting interoperability and cooperation between software services, company systems and intelligent objects. The iCargo ecosystem encompasses existing business communities, allowing them to keep their standards at the same time enlarging the scope of their interactions. These aspects trigger modifications in the current business scenarios by introducing new and value-added elements that heavily influence the business models of the involved companies.

The categories of companies that will be considered are the Logistic Service Client (LSC) as the user purchasing the door-to-door service solution, the Freight Service Integrator (FSI) as the user providing the combined door-to-door service to the LSC, the Logistic Service Provider (LSP) as the user providing transport and logistic services contributing to the door-to-door solution like, and the Information Services Integrator (ISI) as the organization providing the information infrastructure of the iCargo ecosystem. The other two roles in the iCargo Value Chain are only marginally addressed, as they are not directly involved as services providers, and this are not expected to develop Business Models for iCargo. These are the Transportation Network Manager (TNM) as the organization in charge of managing of the transportation infrastructure sustaining the door-to-door flow like, the Transport Regulator (TR) as the organization receiving all mandatory reporting and checking if reporting has been carried out, in order to ensure that all services are completed according to existing rules and regulations.

The Proposed Methodology

We propose the following innovative methodology to find out the evolution of the market due to the iCargo innovations:

1. Collection of data about the current business models in the market, on the basis of the Osterwalder Canvas, implemented by the companies belonging to the LSC, FSI, LSP, and ISI categories. The canvas is derived from the business model ontology by Osterwalder, [START_REF] Osterwalder | The Business Model Ontology. A Proposition in a Design Science Approach[END_REF], [START_REF] Osterwalder | Clarifying Business Models: Origins, Present, and Future of the Concept[END_REF], in which nine building blocks are the core of the business model are proposed. These building blocks are customer segments, value proposition, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partnerships, and cost structure. 2. Mapping the current implemented business models by the different involved actors and the business and technical innovations introduced by iCargo to show the advantages conveyed by the iCargo new low carbon door-to-door services in the current business scenarios. In the proposed approach, we link the iCargo business and technical innovations to the dimensions of the Canvas to find out the effect of these benefits on the business models and, in particular, how the elements that characterize the business models of each category of actors are influenced by these new solutions. 3. Creating a template that allows to examine the new business models to systematically consider alternative approaches to value creation in terms of reference business models. The questions that help to shape a business model represent a series of decisions, each of which has a set of possible outcomes: (i) no change on current dimension of the business model, either because it is outside the company's business or because the company already provides a suitable solution; (ii) change in terms of not a new solution but an adaptation of the current model, for the company to stay competitive in the iCargo ecosystem. The change is not so relevant as to require a significantly different business model, but some aspects still need to be changed; (iii) disruption in terms of a solution that does not fit the company's current model. Moreover, the iCargo solution will be implemented in an entirely different way that, if successful, will put the company current solution out of the market as obsolete or no longer needed; (iv) opportunity in terms of a new solution, not fitting the company's current offer, but the company is in the position to provide it by evolving its business model. Hence, the company has the strategic opportunity to provide the new solution by leveraging its current assets and expertise. The "opportunity" case indicates a challenge, too, since if the opportunity is missed it may actually become a disruption, [START_REF] Anthony | Innovator's Guide to Growth -Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work[END_REF]. Selecting one possibility from each category and then linking them together forms one potential new way to proceed. And, of course, selecting different combinations creates other possible outcomes. Fig. 2 below depicts an extract from an example of possible evolution of the current business model into different new business models, indicated as BM. 4. Definition of the iCargo ecosystem and description of the evolution of the current market to the future iCargo ecosystem, see Chapter 4. From the general theory of business ecosystems, [START_REF] Iansiti | Strategy as ecology[END_REF], [START_REF] Moore | Predators and prey: a new ecology of competition[END_REF], [START_REF] Moore | The Death of Competition: Leadership & Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems[END_REF], [START_REF] Moore | Business ecosystems and the view from the firm[END_REF], there are two foundational components in a business ecosystem: (i) first, it is a necessary to create value within the ecosystem in order to attract and retain clients and providers, thus providing growth potential for the ecosystem. In the case of iCargo, this means delivering better, less expensive and less pollutant logistic services, based on the foreseen business and technical innovations; (ii) second, an appropriate ecosystem structure is needed to share the value within the ecosystem. The different species of business actors must find their own well-defined and relatively secure value propositions, relying on other actors for complementary products and services.

The complete iCargo Business Ecosystem in its mature stage is represented in Fig. 3 below: there are the six roles in the iCargo Reference Value Chain, represented by rounded rectangles. For each role, the corresponding reference Business Model is identified, represented by circles of different colors showing the different types of evolution in the iCargo ecosystem: (i) blue: pre-existing models that may grow or shrink in the iCargo ecosystem, (ii) green: new models, made possible by iCargo, (iii) red: models that will be disrupted because of iCargo. Solid arrows represent provision of products or services from one role to the other, whereas dashed arrows represent evolution from one Business Model (one circle) to the other. companies will have the opportunity to enhance their business through iCargo, by becoming environment-focused retailers and manufacturers, and/or e-commerce based retailers. Logistic Services Providers will have a similar evolution, being pushed by their clients and by the iCargo opportunity to evolve towards environmentfocused business models. Traditional asset-bound integrators, such as warehousing companies or terminal operators, will re-focus their value proposition on their core services rather than on the integration, thus going back to the LSP role. The business model of network-bound integrators, such as supply-chain outsourcers or closed marketplaces, will be disrupted. Instead, Virtual Integrators will emerge as providers of pure information services and competencies for better composing, planning and monitoring logistic chains in iCargo. The traditional system integrator model, developing ad-hoc platforms and services for interoperability, will disappear.

Interoperability on the business level will be provided as a service from Connectivity Infrastructure Providers. These will likely evolve into Monitoring Infrastructure Providers, offering logistics monitoring as a combination of hardware/infrastructure rental and services. Software and hardware vendors will remain as providers of specialized functionality to the other information services providers in iCargo. Transport Regulators, like custom authorities, and Transport Network Managers, like road administrators are expected to make available relevant information that they handle acquiring distribution rights for these types of information services.

Conclusions

The main results of the presented work deal with the study of the evolution of the business models of the main category of actors involved in the iCargo Reference Value Chain. The impact of iCargo in the current business models has been detailed and specified in relation to the influence of its business and technical innovations on the nine dimensions of the Osterwalder business model Canvas. These results are particularly important in the iCargo project and represent a common basis for the exploitation planning phase. The next steps will focus on the validation of the results with the iCargo involved actors in order to increase the understanding of using business models in the development of possible future business options.

The innovation of the proposed approach is related to the exploration of the business model concept as an evolution and not only as a static analysis in order to capture systematically new opportunities that are not currently addressed.

By analyzing the value creation and business logic of companies by using the business model framework, it is possible to develop a solid understanding about the principles and dynamics of a specific industry. The business model also highlights the critical service related issues like relationships with customers needing special attention in the industry's development, and it can be utilized in designing new services, too. The proposed approach could be also generalized to other applications and domains in which the key issues concern the investigation of the value creations and the effect of innovative strategies on the current business models.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. iCargo Reference Value Chain

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. Proposed approach to analyse the evolution of the business models.

Fig. 3 .

 3 Fig. 3. iCargo Business Ecosystem evolution

Acknowledgments. The paper presents the work carried on within the Intelligent Cargo in Efficient and Sustainable Global Logistics Operations, iCargo, project.