Wiktor Adamus, Dominika Walec and Jerzy Rosinski
The cluster excellence and the ways of achieving it have become the main questions of scholars and practitioners in recent years. Despite the on-going debate there are still only a few studies that investigate cluster initiatives (CI) performance and management phenomena, identify the success factors underlying cluster initiatives management success and compare their influence. The objective of this study is to identify Critical Success Factors of cluster initiatives management. The proposed Analytic Hierarchy Process framework identifies the relative importance of different success factors to cluster initiative management and determines the key areas of activity and management focus. The AHP based interviews conducted among European cluster managers representing 19 cluster initiatives located in 10 countries allowed to identify the following Critical Success Factors: ‘Assuring sustainability of financing’, ‘Development of CI mission, vision, strategy and operational action plan’, ‘Integration building partnerships inside the CI, creation of interpersonal links, social networks, trust’ and ‘Development of cluster’s critical mass and management of partners’ complementarities and interdependencies’. Their joint importance for cluster initiative management success reached 40%, while the remaining 60% was distributed among 16 other factors.
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