Supporting organizations and leading firms: a transition towards social and environmental practices inside clusters

ABSTRACT

The objective of this research is to understand how new social and environmental practices are introduced and developed in clusters. From an international perspective and based on cluster literature, we propose that leading firms and supporting organizations are the main drivers of these practices. In particular, we work on the hypothesis that firms with solid international experience, innovative capacity and resources, as well as having stable relationships with local organizations, positively affect social and environmental practices within clusters. Empirical evidence gathered on 175 Spanish footwear firms located in clusters obtained in 2018 reveals that firms are the conduit for incorporating new social and environmental practices in traditional clusters. This is particularly true of larger, highly internationalized firms or those of more recent creation. Contrary to our expectations, the role of innovation capacity and local supporting organizations has not been endorsed. Finally, policy and managerial implications for the local dissemination of social and environmental practices are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Institutional approach
• stakeholders
• Marshallian industrial district
• environmental and social transitions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 SABI is a directory of Spanish and Portuguese companies provided by Bureau Van Dijk that collects both general information and financial data. We used the corresponding code of the National Classification of Economic Activities CNAE 2009 (152 Footwear industry). CNAE-2009 is the National Classification of Economic Activities, and has been compiled according to the conditions set out in the Regulation approving CNAE Rev.2.

2 We decided to combine both data to achieve a more reliable indicator of embeddedness and retrieval of knowledge from the local network. A non-member may punctually interact with the institute to face a specific challenge, while many members hire product tests or basic advice.

3 Due to multicollinearity concerns, following suggestions by Hervás-Oliver and Albors-Garrigos (2009) for testing interaction effects, we also ran our models using the stepwise procedure to progressively minimize the number of superfluous and non-significant variables (available upon request). Once results were compared, we concluded that all relevant predictors overlapped across the models, dissipating potential doubts about the robustness and validity of our analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Generalitat Valenciana: [Grant Number EBCORG/2018/5, EBCORG/2019/1, EBCORG/2019/1 and the Chair GVA-UMH for the Transformation of the Economic Model].