Managing local supplier networks: conflict or compromise

This paper examines conflict management in small firm networks. Informal conflict management strategies used in exchange relationships are identified and analysed. In-depth, semi-structured interviews with 22 small and medium-sized enterprise managers in an industrial district in the south-east of France are analysed. Results point to managers adopting accommodating behaviours in conflicts with clients and compromising and collaborative strategies with local partners. This research reveals the mobilization of local norms in the management of conflicts and also contributes to research concerning coopetition and the possibility that managers of small firms may both separate and integrate coopetition activities

Proximity Dimensions and Scientific Collaboration among Academic Institutions in Europe: The Closer, the Better?

The main objective of this paper is to examine the effect of various proximity dimensions (geographical, cognitive, institutional, organizational, social and economic) on academic scientific collaborations (SC). The data to capture SC consists of a set of co-authored articles published between 2006 and 2010 by universities located in EU-15, indexed by the Science Citation Index (SCI Expanded) of the ISI Web of Science database. We link this data to institution-level information provided by the EUMIDA dataset. Our final sample consists of 240,495 co-authored articles from 690 European universities that featured in both datasets. Additionally, we also retrieved data on regional R&D funding from Eurostat. Based on the gravital equation, we estimate several econometrics models using aggregated data from all disciplines as well as separated data for Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Life Sciences and Physics & Astronomy. Our results provide evidence on the substantial role of geographical, cognitive, institutional, social and economic distance in shaping scientific collaboration, while the effect of organizational proximity seems to be weaker. Some differences on the relevance of these factors arise at discipline level

Mapping Inventors’ Networks to Trace Knowledge Flows Among EU Regions

Recent literature on technological changes has highlighted the role of knowledge recombination in innovation. Evidence suggests that the production of scientific and technological knowledge is becoming an increasingly collective phenomenon. Thus, in rapidly developing industries, it is almost inevitable to develop inter-organizational collaborations to identify new opportunities for new technologies. The aim of this chapter was to explore the innovative activities and networks in European regions (EU 27 plus Norway and Switzerland) from 1980 to 2010. Specifically, we analysed the most innovative sectors: environmental (green), biotechnology (biotech), laser and optic technology and nanotechnology (nanotech). This longitudinal study relies on European Patent Office (EPO) patents and inventors’ data by year and region, as provided by OECD-Regpat database. Our main findings emphasize the rise of co-inventions in intra-regional and inter-regional inventive networks, the concentration of innovations in central regions and peripheral regions’ reliance on external knowledge flows to compensate for their technological weaknesses

Les pays émergents à la conquête des marchés mondiaux.

L’attractivité des pays émergents est souvent réduite en Europe et aux Etats-Unis au débat sur les transferts d’activités vers ces pays. Ce débat sous-estime le phénomène inverse, à savoir la pénétration des marchés des pays développés par des firmes globales issues des pays émergents.Nous discutons ici de l’exemple de l’industrie du logiciel qui a connu depuis 15 ans une croissance spectaculaire en Inde comme en Chine. Or, les trajectoires sectorielles de ces deux pays donnent lieu à des processus différenciés mais bien réels de contestation des marchés des pays développés par les firmes globales des pays émergents.In Europe and the United States, the attractiveness of emerging countries is often reduced to the debate on the transfer of economic activities towards these countries. This debate underestimates the opposite phenomenon, namely the penetration of the markets in developed countries by global firms stemming from emerging countries. Here is discussed the example of the software industry which has experienced a dramatic growth in India as in China for 15 years. Now, the sector-based trajectories of these two countries lead to differentiated but very real processes of contesting the markets of developed countries by global firms of emerging countries

Téléphone portable, proximité et mobilité : une nouvelle donne ?

International audienceno abstrac

The effects of supraregional innovation and production collaboration on technology development in a multiregional world: A spatial agent-based model study.

With globalization, firms acquire locally unavailable inputs from and collaborate in innovation with firms in other regions. We contend that, depending on the collaboration distances feasible and spatial layout of regions, a core-periphery structure of regions emerges, in which core regions produce more advanced and complex products. We develop a spatial agent-based model of (supraregional) firm collaboration in production and innovation to study technological progress. We find that when collaboration is possible over greater distances, agents produce more advanced and more complex products. Moreover, we find that, in general, the core-periphery structure indeed emerges. However, for some layouts, the core-periphery structure vanishes almost immediately, while for others first becomes stronger, peaks and then vanishes with an increase in collaboration distance. Moreover, we find that the properties of the technology structure play a prominent mediating role, e.g. the effect of supraregional collaboration on technological progress may be strong for some and relatively weak for other structures