Paper info

Inter-firm Relationships in Industrial Agglomerations - the Case of the Portuguese Industry of Moulds

Joao Mota and Luis de Castro

The paper was published at the 17th IMP-conference in Oslo, Norway in 2001.

Some authors questioned the continued relevance of industrial districts, now that communicationsinfrastructures and possibilities develop ever faster. It has been stressed that learning, in particularthe diffusion of tacit knowledge, may be a major benefit for each of the firms located in industrialdistricts. Industrial districts can also be seen as ?a localised network? where one can more easilyresearch the operation of some mechanisms, which are nevertheless not exclusive to them(Loasby, 1998c). The combination of Loasbian notion of firm, as a set of direct and indirectcapabilities, with the industrial network approach may be useful to gain an enriched view of thedynamics of industrial agglomerations. This paper seeks to give an interpretation of how thespatial agglomeration of firms operating in the industry of moulds at Marinha Grande mayfacilitate certain local practices. Our study of moulds industry, suggests that the potential togenerate and access diversity seems to be increased by both spatial proximity of firms and theemergence of relationships between them and with external actors. This last mechanism suggests afocus on interactions in the context of both connected and partially counterpart-specificrelationships.