Entrepreneurship and Development: The Role of Clusters

Héctor Rocha ()

Small Business Economics, 2004, vol. 23, issue 5, 363-400

Abstract: Defining entrepreneurship as the creation of new organisations,this paper explores,from a literature review standpoint,the moderating effect of clusters on the impact of entrepreneurship on development. To identify potential causes of this moderating effect, the paper focuses on three different impacts: entrepreneurship on development, clusters on development,and clusters on entrepreneurship. The findings of the paper are threefold.First,entrepreneurship is positively associated with economic growth.Given the importance of entrepreneurship in changing the economic and social structure of the economy,more research on the impact of entrepreneurship on development - i.e. focus on capabilities rather than on output - is needed. Second,it is difficult to reach empirical generalisations on the impact of clusters on development and entrepreneurship given conceptual and methodological constraints. Both positive results and caveats are found at different levels of analysis and at different stages of development of a cluster. Finally, given the previous finding, it is difficult to generalise on the impact of clusters on the association between entrepreneurship and development. Consensus on and validity between conceptual and operational definitions of clusters; consideration of context as well as process and, therefore, quantitative and qualitative methods; and differentiation between levels of analysis controlling for cluster stage and strength are the main criteria for future studies to consider to disentangle the impact of clusters on entrepreneurship, development and the association between entrepreneurship and development. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004

Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (82)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11187-004-3991-8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:sbusec:v:23:y:2004:i:5:p:363-400

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-004-3991-8

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().