Micro Behavioural Attitudes and Macro Technological Adaptation in Industrial Districts. An Agent-Based Prototype

Abstract

Industrial Districts (IDs) are complex productive systems based on an evolutionary network of heterogeneous, functionally integrated and complementary firms, which are within the same market and geographical space. Setting up a prototype, able to reproduce an idealised ID, we model cognitive processes underlying the behaviour of ID firms. ID firms are bounded rationality agents, able to process information coming from technology and market environment and from their relational contexts. They are able to evaluate such information and to transform it into courses of action, routinising their choices, monitoring the environment, categorising, typifying and comparing information. But they have bounded cognitive resources: attention, time and memory. We test two different settings: the first one shows ID firms behaving according to a self-centred attitude, while the second one shows ID firms behaving according to a social centred attitude. We study how such a strong difference at micro-level can affect at macro-level the technological adaptation of IDs