Can the relationship between international clients and intermediate goods suppliers lead to declusterisation? A feedback model of the case of the Italian textile and ceramic tile machinery industry

摘要

The internationalization strategy of actors operating in clusters has shown over time its weaknesses, producing a negative effect over the competitiveness of some operators of the cluster itself. In fact, the internationalization of machinery producers has interrupted the innovative process which originated from the interplay of the various actors of the cluster (relational capital). This phenomenon is particularly true if we consider the internationalization in the NICs which started from the beginning of the 90's, producing a resources diversion from the market of origin to farther markets. Analyzing the demographic data on companies operating in a district, it is clear and visible the fact that many downward operators are reducing in number and are exporting even less than the average of all Italian industrial companies. The feedback model presented in the paper explains this phenomenon exploring consequences produced by export strategies of machinery producers and on the cluster as a whole.