Regional productive systems from a network analysis perspective

Abstract

This paper discuss a methodology to analyse industrial relationships based on social networkanalysis and on the concepts of embeddedness (Granovetter, 1973), productive system (Wilkin-son, 1985) and social capital. Once the perspective is discussed it is applied to study industrialrelationships in the Basque Country (Spain).The application of the social network analysis to economic research is at the moment at its initialstages, although it has been widely applied in sociology and psychology. The dominance of theneoclassical mainstream paradigm in economics, based on principles and developing theoriesthat do not consider as relevant the social and relational character of agents and systems, isamong the main reasons. However, all the perspectives, even the neoclassical, assume thateconomics is a social science.In this paper relationships are the focus of the analysis and they are considered for a particularproductive system, geographically and historically specified. The concept of productive systemis understood by considering mercantile and non-mercantile relationships among the firms con-stituting a particular industrial sector. Moreover, relationships are linking firms, and economicsectors at a more macro level, with other types of institutions such as technology parks, re-search institutes and universities. At the same time, informal relationships among actors shouldalso be included, together with the formal links, to analyse a complete productive system. Thewhole relational structure is analysed considering its context, and therefore allowing for the consideration of geographical, historical and social peculiarities, that are necessary for a betterunderstanding of its characteristics.