Business Networks in Clusters and Industrial Districts

Business Networks in Clusters and Industrial Districts
Author: Fiorenza Belussi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2009-09-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1134048548

During the 1980s the Marshallian concept of industrial district (ID) became widely popular due to the resurgence of interest in the reasons that make the agglomeration of specialised industries a territorial phenomenon worth being analysed. The analysis of clusters and IDs has often been limited, considering only the local dimension of the created business networks. The external links of these systems have been systematically under-evaluated. This book offers a deep insight into the evolution of these systems and the internal-external mechanism of knowledge circulation and learning. This means that the access to external knowledge (information or R&D cooperative research) or to productive networks (global supply chains) is studied in order to describe how external knowledge is absorbed and how local clusters or districts become global systems. It provides a unified approach; showing that existing capabilities expand when locally embedded knowledge is combined with accessible external knowledge. In this view, external knowledge linkages reduce the danger of cognitive ‘lock-in’ and ‘over-embeddedness’, which may become important obstacles to local learning and innovation when technological trajectories and global economic conditions change. A selection of international experts

Industrial Districts

Industrial Districts
Author: Ivana Paniccia
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2002
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The multidisciplinary, quantitative approach adopted by the author, enables her to "de-structure" the "canonical" idea of the ID and evaluate the normative value. Supported by multivariate and econometric analyses, she identifies four general types of ID each with different development paths, performances, inter-organizational relations, and regulatory rules and institutions. The results demonstrate that IDs on average achieve better static or dynamic economic performance than non-ID areas. The analysis also highlights critical points of rupture in the socio-economic equilibrium of IDs which may impair their future competitiveness and social sustainability. The author offers a critical appraisal of the organizational literature on IDs, claiming for caution in their depiction as "cooperative systems" and goes on to present the first steps towards a "microfoundation" of a theory on IDs.

Clusters, Networks and Innovation

Clusters, Networks and Innovation
Author: Stefano Breschi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 2005-12-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199275556

Examining the role of the much-vaunted concepts of regional clusters in the prosperity and economic expansion of countries, this work looks at the different experiences of industrial districts and high-tech regions such as Silicon Valley, Boston's biotech region, and Hsinchu-Taipei.

Industrial Clusters and Regional Business Networks in England, 1750-1970

Industrial Clusters and Regional Business Networks in England, 1750-1970
Author: John Wilson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351927809

Although economists have long recognised industrial districts as one of the key features of many economies, it is only recently that attention has been focused on the region as an effective means of generating accurate insights into the larger picture of economic performance. This renewed interest in regional issues has also placed at centre stage the role played by networks as a principal organisational feature of the local business community, providing scholars with a rich topic for investigation and debate. Recent work has shown that universal generalisations concerning the impact of networking on the performance of industrial clusters lack credibility, highlighting the consequent need to compare the role played by business networks in a variety of regions. Using a copious range of research material examining several British regions, this volume poses a series of fundamental questions about the nature of industrial clusters and networks. Particular attention is paid to identifying the basic characteristics of a network, outlining how they evolved in key industrial clusters, and assessing their impact on industrial performance, both regionally and nationally. The durability of such networks is another key thread that runs through the essays, prompting comparison with industrial clusters in Britain and abroad. These are issues which stimulate discussion on a wide range of factors within the disciplines of business, economic and social history.

Unfolding Cluster Evolution

Unfolding Cluster Evolution
Author: Fiorenza Belussi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2016-08-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317301838

Various theories have been put forward as to why business and industry develops in clusters and despite good work being carried out on path dependence and dynamics, this is still very much an emerging topic in the social sciences. To date, no overarching theoretical framework has been developed to show how clusters evolve. Unfolding Cluster Evolution aims to address this gap by presenting theoretical and empirical research on the geography of innovation. This contributed volume seeks to shed light on the understanding of clusters and its dynamic evolution. The book provides evidence to suggest that traditional perspectives from evolutionary economic geography need to be wedded to management thinking in order to reach this point. Bringing together thinking from a range of disciplines and countries across Europe, this book explores a wide range of topics from the capability approach, to network dynamics, to multinational corporations, to firm entry and exit and social capital. This book will be of interest to policy makers and students of urban studies, economic geography, and planning and development.

Local Clusters in Global Value Chains

Local Clusters in Global Value Chains
Author: Valentina De Marchi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2017-07-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351724002

The international fragmentation of economic activities – from research and design to production and marketing – described through the lens of the global value chain (GVC) approach impacts the structure and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) agglomerated in economic clusters. The consolidation of GVCs ruled by global lead firms and the recession of 2008-09 exacerbated the pressures on cluster actors that based their competitive advantage on local systems, spurring an increasing heterogeneity, both across and within clusters, that is still overlooked in the literature. Drawing on detailed studies of different industries and countries, Local Clusters in Global Value Chains shows the co-evolutionary trajectories of clusters and GVCs, and the role of firms and their strategies in organizing manufacturing and innovation activities in the context of ongoing technological shifts. The book explores the tension between place-based variables and global drivers of change, and the possibility for territories containing such clusters to prosper in the new global scenario. By adopting insights from the GVC framework and management studies, the book discusses how the internationalization strategies of firms create opportunities as well as constraints for adaptive upgrading in clusters. This book is of interest to both researchers and policy-makers who are interested in the dynamic sources of competitive advantage in the global economy.

Industrial Clusters

Industrial Clusters
Author: John F. Wilson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2022-07-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000609286

Industrial Clusters shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic of industrial clusters, with a particular focus on clustering in the UK, bringing together a chronological coverage of the phenomenon. This set of original essays by a group of leading business and industrial historians offers fresh perspectives about clusters and clustering. A primary emphasis of the collection is how knowledge is generated and disseminated across a cluster, and whether these processes stimulated innovation and consequently longer-term sustainability. This analysis also prompts questions about which unit of analysis to examine, from the entrepreneurs and firms they created through to the industry as a whole and district in which they are located, or whether one should look outside the region for explanatory factors. Covering regions as diverse as North Wales, the Scottish Highlands, the City of London, the Potteries, Sheffield and Lancashire, the essays have been channelled to provide a detailed understanding of these issues. The editors have also provided a challenging Conclusion that suggests a new research agenda that could well unravel some of the mysteries associated with clustering. This edited collection will be of interest to international researchers, academics and students in the fields of business and management history, innovation, industrialisation and clusters.

Agglomeration and Firm Performance

Agglomeration and Firm Performance
Author: Fiorenza Belussi
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2018-08-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319905759

This contributed volume studies and explains the effect of agglomeration on a firm’s innovation and performance. It presents new cases as well as new topics within the agglomeration phenomenon, exploring also their role under the Great Recession. Beyond the analysis of regions or clusters, this volume focuses on firms within agglomerations and captures this phenomenon from different perspectives, contexts and diverse literatures. Specifically, it looks at the question under what circumstances exert generate benefits on firms’ performance, and how those gains are generated and distributed, usually asymmetrically, across agglomerated firms. In this context, the book addresses topics such as networks, collocation, labor mobility, firm’s strategies, innovation, competitiveness and collective actions across a diverse set of literatures, including economic geography, business economics, management, social networks, industrial districts, international business, sociology or industry dynamics.

Dislocation: Awkward Spatial Transitions

Dislocation: Awkward Spatial Transitions
Author: Philip Cooke
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2021-05-18
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000387860

Today, the world is in the most serious turmoil it has experienced for many centuries. These multiple crises arise from the fundamental mistreatment by capitalist competition of the carrying capacity of the planet. Even before coronavirus, evidently morbid symptoms of over-development led many spatial planners to write of the threat of a new Dark Age. Many advocated a return to policy decentralisation as the Covid-19 crisis demonstrated once again the failure of ‘global controller’ mindsets to manage complex systems successfully. Dislocation: Awkward Spatial Transitions is a critical exploration of where spatial development processes and rules have gone wrong across many economies. The chapters lay out which mindsets have been responsible for this and gives pointers to new practices that aim to ameliorate the effects of past failings. In the first nine chapters, a mapping of key elements of the prevailing omni-crisis are summarised. These range from an exegesis of the Anthropocene, the rise of populism, the transition to neoliberalist anti-planning, and migration as planning issues with pleas for evolutionary change in spatial policy and process dynamics. Finally, a group of chapters explores the flailing as territorial governances tried to plot the rise of creative cities, 4.0 era industry and services, and in the built form, the role of 'starchitects' in city renewal. In the last part, attention is devoted to territorial innovation, knowledge recombination, sustainable mobility and, finally, green entrepreneurship, as necessary elements of a post-coronavirus, climate change mitigation and sustainable mobility set of survival strategies. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal European Planning Studies.

Global Competition and Local Networks

Global Competition and Local Networks
Author: Rod B. McNaughton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2018-02-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351768239

This title was first published in 2002. The interest in becoming globally competitive through network strategies, particularly networks between small and medium-sized firms in local business communities, is high among academic researchers, economic development agencies and growth orientated firms. Important contributions to our understanding of the strategic use of networks are coming from a number of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. This volume provides a unique opportunity to both synthesize this diverse literature and report the results of original research. It is particularly relevant to scholars of business and management, geography and economics