Field analysis of industrial development in a peripheral region of Norway

ABSTRACT The paper explores how industrial development can occur in a peripheral region through the gradual development of strategic coherence between organisations, materiality, and agency. In a longitudinal case study of how the mechatronics industry became a main area for regional development spanning 50 years in the region of Agder in Norway, the authors have followed how national and regional innmovation policies, individual actors, and organisational strategies eventually flow together and influence organisations and firms to collaborate towards new and shared aims. In the paper, the authors perform field theory analysis, with emphasis on the significance of the development of reciprocal relations between institutions, understood as authorities, businesses, and universities, and strategic agency within and between strategic action fields. They question how industrial development in a peripheral region can be understood through a strategic action fields framework. The findings reveal that development of the industry spanned the evolution from small-scale entrepreneurial engineering activities in the 1960s to a regional innovation system and National Centre of Excellence with global knowledge hub ambitions in the 2010s. In conclusion, the analysis shows how mechatronics achieved a central role in regional development through common action between previously decoupled academic and industrial strategic action fields.