Seven perspectives on regional clusters and the case of Grand Rapids office furniture city

Vipin Gupta and Ram Subramanian

International Business Review, 2008, vol. 17, issue 4, 371-384

Abstract: The globalization of the value chain puts older regional clusters characterized by local, vertical value chains across multiple connected sectors, at a significant risk. Firms operating within the local regional clusters need to develop new generic strategies and new bases of competitive advantage in response to the growing outsourcing within the regional cluster. We review Krugman's geography, Porter's diamond, and European regional innovation system perspectives, as well as three extensions of those perspectives, to identify relevant generic strategies and bases of competitive advantage in regional clusters. A seventh transnational value chain perspective is also discussed. Then, we contextually analyze the historical furniture cluster of the Greater Grand Rapids region, Michigan, USA, and highlight the shifts in the generic strategies and the bases of competitive advantage in response to globalization. The findings have critical implications for the theory of regional clustering, and for the policy decisions.

Keywords: Competitive; advantage; Globalization; Regional; clusters (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969593108000383
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:iburev:v:17:y:2008:i:4:p:371-384

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/133/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... me/133/bibliographic

Access Statistics for this article

International Business Review is currently edited by P. Ghauri

More articles in International Business Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().