The Moore's Closure for Analyzing Relationships between Agents in Industrial Clusters

Industrial clusters try to exploit the effect of external economies and joint actions that come from the collaboration between their agents. But in order that these effects arise it is needed close cooperation partnerships between the agents in the industrial cluster, which could improve competitiveness. It's obvious, therefore, that analyzing which are the relationships between the agents in the industrial cluster is critical to make strategic decisions that promote and improve the competitiveness of the industrial cluster. This paper proposes a methodology based on obtaining a fuzzy relation from which, applying Moore's closure in an uncertain situation, we can identify subrelations that group industrial cluster agents depending on their degree of affinity based on the intensity of their relationships.Keywords: affinity, moore's closure, fuzzy relations, industrial clusterJEL Classification: C69, L14(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1. INTRODUCTION: INDUSTRIAL CLUSTER CONCEPTThe emergence of a flexible specialization production model has brought industrial dispersal or diffuse industrialization strategies, based on decentralized production models characterized by the concentration of companies in an industry in a environment geographically delimited, to acquire an increasing role, increasingly more intensely [3]. The different currents of thought that have analyzed this phenomenon have called it using different names (industrial districts, innovative environments, local production systems, etc.), but, nowadays, [20] proposal of industrial cluster has become the most used to refer to groups of companies in the same sector located in the same geographic area to share resources and capabilities and increase their competitiveness, both individually and globally.Industrial clusters allow companies to improve their competitiveness because they take advantage of agglomeration economies, obtaining benefit from their proximity, from the existence of certain infrastructure and equipment in the territory, from diversified customer markets and labour markets, from a better access to information and knowledge, and from a social, cultural and institutional environment focused on the development of the main industrial cluster activity. Within the industrial cluster appear productive relations of cooperation of a certain intensity and consistency, based on the complementarity of the different production processes carried out by various companies in the same sector. When we analyze industrial clusters in a dynamic perspective we can see how their performance is a result of the integration of multiple different actions where many actors are involved, both individually and collectively [1]. The fact that this integration requires physical proximity relations, involves the configuration of unique spatial units in production, social, cultural, technological, political and institutional terms [15]. In that sense, [20] introduces the concept of industrial cluster, as the natural union of the companies in a particular sector, and with other related industries in a given territory. These companies develop connections with a large number of support services to generate synergies, externalities, cooperation and dissemination of technology; characteristics that give the industry cluster competitive advantages.An industrial cluster is a group of companies and institutions geographically close, and related to a particular field, linked by common and complementary features. In other words, the specialization of human capital, the flow of information, the innovation processes and the diffusion of technology, and the relations between suppliers and customers, provide the ideal framework for the emergence of external economies to the firm but internal to the territories. Geographic proximity facilitates communication, technological externalities, leads to efficient delivery of intermediate inputs at lower costs, and allows a greater market share of inputs and outputs, as well as a reserve of qualified local labour. …