Rating of Network-Integrated Corporations

While conventional rating systems are still focused on individual companies, in reality stand-alone business of a single enterprise respectively debtor is more likely the exception than the rule. Joint business activities of two or more companies (organizational networks) are becoming ubiquitous and have a critical influence on each partners' success. In order to avoid that rating that turns into some rather useless ritual, network characteristics, such as network assets, network capital, network securities, network management competency, network business opportunities and network structure have to be taken into account when evaluating solvency of a network-embedded corporation. Using primary credit cooperatives as an illustrative object, this paper gives an overview on those new rating criteria becoming relevant in conjunction with network-embeddedness, so that workable opportunities can be shown to improve the reliability of ratings.