For two decades now the cluster and network concept has been associated with economic growth and an upgrade of the local economic structure by many regional political actors. At the same time, although this concept is an extremely popular instrument of regional structural development among...

Cooke P., Clifton N. and Oleaga M. (2005) Social capital, firm embeddedness and regional development, Regional Studies 39 , 1065-1077. This paper presents the results of a research project examining the effects of social capital on the performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in...

Taymaz E. and Kilicaslan Y. (2005) Determinants of subcontracting and regional development: an empirical study on Turkish textile and engineering industries, Regional Studies 39 , 633-645. Recent studies on small- and medium-sized establishments emphasize the importance of networking and...

Support of agriculture is justified, among others, by its contribution to rural economic development. Nevertheless, the relation between agricultural and general economic development may be ambiguous. On the one side, agriculture may affect other sectors positively via multiplier and income...

Innovation has become of great importance to entrepreneurs, governments and scientists, since it has been recognised as the key factor to growth and competitiveness. Studies dedicated to innovation have proven that innovation and knowledge capital are highly concentrated in a minority of urban...

Our research focuses on the SNCF company. With 160,000 workers, SNCF is a bureaucratic structure (Weber, 1971; Mintzberg, 1982; Alter, 1995, 1996) facing the challenge of openness to competition. We analyse the participative innovation routine that has deeply changed since the 1990s, whereas a routine...