Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business

 

Special Issue on: "Designing the Future: The Role of Clusters as Change Agents"

Guest Editors:
Poul Rind Christensen, Torben Damgaard and Mads Bruun Ingstrup, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

All over the world, various types of industrial clusters exist and influence the way in which firms cooperate and compete. Clusters are often stressed as growth promoters and innovation facilitators fostering higher productivity and competiveness for the firms located within compared to those outside clusters.

Inspired by these circumstances as well as intensified political awareness, interest in clusters has grown considerably among researchers in areas of business studies, regional science and economic geography, as well as among policy makers who would like to endorse and benefit from the presence of one or more clusters in their administrative domains.

In the last decades a series of clusters have been studied using several theoretical perspectives; for example, a strategy and competitiveness perspective, an institutional perspective, a resource-based perspective and a knowledge and learning perspective. To increase our insight into clusters, further integrations of these and other perspectives are needed, as well as a shift of the research on clusters from a dominating result-oriented view to a process-oriented view focusing on how the results of clusters are achieved and by whom.

Until now most of the research has indeed focused on the benefits of clusters but not on the process leading to them. To address this lack of insight this special issue will deal with how clusters can become a change agent of, for example, national and regional specialisations, patterns of cooperation and competition, and growth. We will accept papers approaching this topic from both quantitative and qualitative views, and papers that offer managerial and cluster policy implications and which have an international perspective are especially favoured.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the at the TCI conference 2013 (3-6 September, 2013, Denmark), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.

Subject Coverage
Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• The conceptuality of clusters, innovation systems and smart specialisations
• Clusters in decline or rejuvenation
• Local clusters in a global or transnational context
• The role of technologies in cluster formation and development
• Clusters as entrepreneurial ecosystems
• Business models in clusters
• Design as a collaborative platform in clusters
• Types of innovations in clusters
• Cluster management and governance
• Cluster policies as a tool for national and regional restructuring
• The virtually of clusters
• Methodological approaches for mapping and evaluating clusters

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper has been completely re-written and if appropriate written permissions have been obtained from any copyright holders of the original paper).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process.

All papers must be submitted online. To submit a paper, please read our Submitting articles page.

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 1 October, 2013