Motives and Barriers in the Field of Cooperation Between Companies. Research Outcomes Based on the Polish Engineering Industry

Polish firms need to improve their performance in order to be more competitive internationally. As theoretical concepts of firm international competitiveness underline the importance of external sources of competitive advantage, empirical studies on firms cooperation may bring significant insight into this field. This paper presents theoretical foundations of firms' motives to form business partnerships and barriers to partnership relations. It is based on results of the study on cooperation of 155 Polish firms from the engineering sector.