Embedded regional networking

Sammanfattning: This licentiate thesis is about the socio-economic activities of regional networks. The research objective is to explore and describe the networking activities taking place between the organisations embedded in such networks. The objective also includes studying the consequences of those networking activities for regional industrial activities as a whole. The thesis reports the findings of four papers, each dealing with different parts of the research objective and conceptual framework articulated in the introductory chapter. The empirical data was collected through case studies of the furniture industry in Lammhult, the silk industry in Como, and the furniture industry in the Metropolitan area of Jalisco. The results imply that firms, non-profit organisations, and government agencies bind together in regional networks in the three cases studied. These regional networks each have distinguishing characteristics: the particular motives for forming the network, the firms and organisations available locally, and the firms’ common area of specialisation in each case. These regional networks share some similarities in these regards, and these similarities influence the objectives, member selection, network hub selection, and initial activities of the networks. These characteristics differ among the regional networks with respect to their initiation and duration. Within a time-frame, the members of the regional network select complementary members and define specialised objectives and activities. The results also reveal that regional networks have different network activities that are characterised by distinct mixtures of temporal, spatial, social, and market embeddedness. The mixtures of different types of embeddedness result in diverse development trajectories in which regional networks have similar and different networking activities over time. The most common type of collaboration among the members of regional networks is their joint participation in international tradeshows. Regional networks develop more specialised networking activities over time, even though these activities take time – sometimes years – to be planned, co-ordinated, realised, and evaluated. The results also indicate that the networking activities of the regional networks have diverse consequences for the industrial activity in the three studied regions.