Veza: An informal network of tourism entrepreneurs

Abstract

This longitudinal research positioned at the juncture of tourism, entrepreneurship and transition economies studies investigates the specific informal personal network veza of tourism entrepreneurs. The study discusses the triggers of network formation and their role and utilisation through the entire business lifecycle. Findings demonstrate that veza ties have a dual role in the lifecycle both as main facilitator of entrepreneurial activity and as driver of success of entrepreneurial ventures by providing necessary resources and overcoming barriers in a turbulent institutional environment. This study contributes to tourism social sciences by providing an integrative framework to study the emergence, formation and utilisation of entrepreneurial informal networks in tourism in transition economies.

Overcoming constraints to immigrant entrepreneurship in Croatia: the role of formal and informal institutions

“…Irrespective of their integration level, most of the immigrant entrepreneurs do not seem to fully understand the most efficient mechanisms and dynamics of the informal networks in Croatia (IN7). It is not a very surprising finding, considering that even the return migrants to Croatia experience the same issues (IN7, Skokic et al, 2019). For instance, one of our respondents signals that: I guess veza ultimately means someone working in the public sector who can get you ahead in some way.…”

“…In Croatia, as in the other Balkan countries, the inefficiency of formal institutions leads to informal practices, which are very often linked with corruption and undermine the legal system, but in some cases they are complementary to formal institutions. These forms of informal networks based on reciprocity and solidarity are known as štela in Bosnia (Brković & Koutkova, 2018;Halilovich & Efendić, 2019), vrski in Macedonia (Otten, 2018) and veza in Croatia Skokic et al, 2019) and Serbia (Stanojevic & Stokanic, 2018). Uhljeb phenomenon in Croatia captures party patronage in the employment process, inefficiency of the public sector and clientelism .…”

La integración de emprendedores turísticos a redes de cooperación inter-empresarial en entornos rurales: Un análisis relacional

“…A pesar de que ambos factores (A1) y (A5) se muestran como centrales en esta comunidad (A), las correlaciones más intensas se muestran entre los lazos fuertes locales (A1) y la mayoría de las ventajas enunciadas anteriormente (Ver Anexo A). Estos factores son altamente valorados porque generan diversas ventajas para los emprendedores, tales como la transferencia de conocimientos, generalmente, de naturaleza tácita (Farrell et al, 2010;Zhang, 2010), son soporte emocional para los nuevos emprendedores (Skokic et al, 2019;Kimbu y Ngoasong, 2016), facilitan la interacción y cooperación (Bachinger, 2011;Divisekera y Nguyen, 2011; e incluso algunos trabajos los colocan como determinantes en la innovación turística (Brenner et al, 2013;van der Zee y Vanneste, 2015).…”

Diverse networks in regional tourism: ties that foster and hinder the development of rural-urban tourism collaboration in Estonia

“…Several studies have used successfully purposive sampling for fulfilling the research aims in the network and collaboration research (e.g., Larsen et al, 2007;Rodger et al, 2009;Skokic et al, 2019;WONDIRAD et al, 2020).…”