Informal SME clusters in the municipal economy (the case of car services clustering in the city of Kemerovo)

Неформальные кластеры малых и средних предприятий в муниципальной экономике (кейс кластеризации автосервисов города Кемерово)

Akulov, Anatoliy (Акулов, Анатолий) ()
Additional contact information
Akulov, Anatoliy (Акулов, Анатолий): Kemerovo State University

Munitsipalitet: ekonomika i upravlenie / Municipality: Economics and Management, 2021, 36-51

Abstract: Informal SME clusters within districts and cities remain underexplored. The research purpose is to identify informal clusters and the presence of MAP-effects in them (based on car services in Kemerovo city). [bMethods of spatial analysis, questionnaire survey, concentration density assessment and statistical methods were used. As a result, two city clusters were identified with car services density 4.5–5.0 times higher than the average (“Kuznetskii” and “Yuzhnyi”), which is due to the attractive location connected with a large number of potential customers. But the initial impetus for the cluster development was the historical (for “Yuzhnyi”) and accidental (for “Kuznetskii”) factors. MAP-effects are erratic. In about half the cases, information, knowledge and competencies are exchanged, as is joint participation in value chains. But the chains are rather unstable. With time, these effects diminish due to changes in social practices, professional communication transfer to the Internet, and the more focused specialization in individual units and makes. At the same time, common purchasing is widely spread, which is facilitated through modern means of Internet communication. Common purchasing and use of expensive equipment is not widely practiced owing to the lack of trust and the ongoing car services specialization. Cluster effects should be considered in the context of the municipal SME development policy, as resources and support are used more efficiently in clusters. In particular, it would be rational to: 1) move from a spatially neutral to a partially selective policy (directing new projects on the location in clusters, priority infrastructure expansion, priority areasformalization for the SME location, depending on the activity); 2) take clusters into account in territorial planning (in land use and development plans); 3) contribute to the collective use of expensive capital assets on digital platforms using municipal-private partnership mechanisms.

Keywords: city; city districts; small and medium enterprises; cluster; MAP-effects; service station; business support; local self-government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.ranepa.ru/rnp/mncplt/m21104.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rnp:mncplt:m21104

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://municipality.expert

Access Statistics for this article

Munitsipalitet: ekonomika i upravlenie / Municipality: Economics and Management is currently edited by Igor Vydrin

More articles in Munitsipalitet: ekonomika i upravlenie / Municipality: Economics and Management from Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by RANEPA maintainer ().