Sustainable Clusters?
An exploration of the sustainability of cluster initiatives in Wales and the Netherlands
Lead Researchers: Dr Gillian Bristow and Dr Peter Wells
This research seeks to determine whether business clusters can help deliver sustainable development objectives. It aims to do this by examining emerging business clusters in Wales and The Netherlands, and focusing on two key research questions; firstly, whether non-material linkages between firms are a precursor to waste and energy interchanges; and secondly, whether the Welsh Assembly Government or regional government in The Netherlands is explicitly linking its policies designed to support sustainable development and the development of business clusters.
The research is grounded in the premise that dominant discourses on local economic development, including that around the concept of clusters, have been narrowly instrumental and have tended to pay little or no attention to the development of sustainable businesses that are adapted to the local environment. At the same time, the relatively new literature on industrial ecology has highlighted the potential for eco-industrial parks based on broader inter-corporate linkages to deliver more sustainable and embedded business models.
Bringing these strands together, the research project will investigate a small number of cluster initiatives in Wales and The Netherlands. The intention at this stage is to undertake a pilot study to explore cluster and sustainable development relationships with a view to providing a platform for a larger, possibly international comparative study later. This pilot study will therefore build upon initial theoretical and empirical work already undertaken (Bristow, 2005; Bristow and Wells, 2005; Wells and Bristow, 2006).
