Barriers to Electronic Clustering

Abstract

Within industrialized countries one of the main producers of wealth and prosperity has been ‘well coordinated and sustainable systems, capable of converting technological innovation assets into substantial levels of local industrial productivity and global competitiveness’, (Scheel, 2002, p. 356). One of the ways of achieving this has been through the establishment of regional clusters. At the time of this research, there was a belief within government circles in Western Australia that collaboration using information communication technology (ICT) would assist regional economic growth. Initial research in a multi-industry regional cluster showed a low level of ICT sophistication, therefore, the research focused on the relationships between the firms in the cluster and the use of collaborative e-commerce. The study was undertaken in a cluster located south of the city of Perth. The cluster had a number of unique elements including the dominance of high-priced and low-volume industrial manufacturing, a number of large multinational firms and the pre-eminence of large defense contractors. The drive behind the government-funded research was to find ways to facilitate greater collaboration using ICT between the firms in the regional cluster. It was perceived that there was a significant gap between the large firms and the lower tiers of middle-sized and small firms. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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