The Sustainability of Clusters - Consequences of Different Governance Regimes of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Cluster Initiatives

This study examines if differences in the governance regimes of top-down and bottom-up clusters can explain a lack of sustainability that researchers assess for publicly initiated top-down clusters. We find in a qualitative study that the core elements of a governance regime – the assigned decision rights, the performance evaluation and the incentive system – are not balanced with the tasks of the managers in top-down clusters. By contrast, in bottom-up clusters, the elements of the governance regime fit to the tasks. A major implication of these findings is that the tasks of top-down clusters have to be reformulated in a way that they can be fulfilled complementarily, so that the cluster managers can adopt sustainable strategies.