The contributions of the relational view to understand the diffusion of a public policy for the promotion of cooperation between SMEs in Brazil[Les apports de la perspective relationnelle pour comprendre la diffusion d'une politique publique de promotion de la coopération entre PME au Brésil]

The development of inter-firm cooperation is a major issue in government policies to support economic competitiveness. In order to optimize the spread and impact of these policies, the public authorities deploy specific mechanisms in which universities can play a central role. While the latter have every legitimacy to be active within the framework of support mechanisms for innovation or technology transfer, it seems less natural to involve them in operations outside these activities. We present the lessons learned from a longitudinal case study of an inter-firm cooperation program conducted in a state in southern Brazil through a partnership between the government and community universities in charge of its operational implementation. From a relational perspective, we analyze the determinants of this partnership in order to identify the relational rents produced by the networks of SMEs built into authentic territorial ecosystems: community access and propagation. We show that these rents are confronted with obstacles that constitute relational losses that must be minimized in order to optimize the effectiveness of the public policy pursued: inflexibility and distance from the target.