Agglomerations, clusters and industrial districts: A vision for future research on clustering

Gonzalez-Loureiro, Miguel; Puig, Francisco; Urzelai, Berrbizne

Abstract

After decades of theoretical and empirical inquiry around the interactive effect of location externalities on firm’s international competitiveness, the time has come to map its intellectual structure in terms of its content. Our study aims to provide a wide systematic literature review of a still controversial concept in terms of its boundaries and metrics namely clustering, which broadly speaking refers to firms and institutions that pertain to the same, related and unrelated industries in a certain territory for co-ompeting – that is competing while cooperating. Relatedness holds for shaping the definition of both clusters and industrial districts (IDs; Asheim, Smith, & Oughton, 2011; Porter & Ketels, 2009), although there are some differences between both concepts. On the other hand, the higher concentration of firms belonging to not necessarily related industries is labelled as agglomerations (McCann & Folta, 2008).
Even in a much-globalized world, location matters (Porter & Ketels, 2009; Ketels, 2011; Meyer, Mudambi, & Narula, 2011). Its impact on firms’ competitiveness and performance is increasingly relevant in the current competition. The firm’s activity is increasingly immersed in a complex and diverse conglomerate of relationships. Firms try to maintain and nurture these networks in order to increase their capability to effectively adapt themselves to the incessant changes occurring in their competitive environment. From the studies of Marshall (1920) and Piore and Sabel (1984), we know that the territorial-based models of networking are considered some of the most fruitful structures for the local organization of the economic activity that helps increase increasing the firms’ competitiveness.
In this context, scholars have tried to find a rational model to explain the diversity of patterns found when analyzing the firm’s decision regarding the location of its activities, as well as the impact of those patterns on the firm’s overall strategy and performance (Puig, Marques, & Ghauri, 2009). From the field of business management and strategy, industrial organization proponents have dealt with this issue essentially by arguing that the firm strategy is shaped to their largest extent by the competitive environment. Works such as those from Michael Porter showed that the international competitive advantages of some industries are rooted in the national context (Porter, 1998). The eclectic Dunning’s (1988) paradigm brings locational advantages of international production to the fore. Specifically, the location advantages (existence of raw materials, lower costs, etc.) explain the nature and destination of foreign direct investment (FDI; Goerzen, Asmussen, & Nielsen, 2013).
A sense of place involves the understanding not only of the global macro context but also the particular location (Buckley, 2016). As Shen and Puig (2017) evidence the more complex the multinational enterprise (MNE) is spatially and organisationally, the bigger is the need to understand its multiple locations, context and degrees of embeddedness. All of this gave rise to the study of particular spatial patterns of co-locations of firms, namely agglomerations, clusters and IDs. Thus, it is not only a question of the spontaneous emergence of any of these relational patterns. If such were the issue, then every firm in that location would benefit from that advantage, which is not the case (Molina-Morales & Martínez-Fernández, 2003). According to these latter authors, what really matters is the feeling of membership and an active involvement in the cluster’s activities. The firm must exchange actively a diversity of resources and capabilities with the other firms for the location to have a determinant impact on the co-located firms’ competitiveness. Thus, geographical proximity is necessary but not sufficient enough for generating interactions, and interactions do not necessarily lead to positive spillovers.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: XXVIII ACEDE Conference: generating and transferring knowledge in a changing and interconnected society
• Start Date: Jun 24, 2018
• End Date: Jun 26, 2018
• Deposit Date: Apr 26, 2022
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9314386
• Publisher URL: https://www.congresoacede.org/congresos-anteriores/congreso/18