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Globalization and the Development of Industrial Clusters: Comparing Two Norwegian Clusters, 1900–2010

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2015

Rolv Petter Amdam  and
Ove Bjarnar
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Abstract

This article explores how clusters have reacted to the recent process of globalization by comparing the development of two clusters that are located in the same region, the county of Møre og Romsdal in Norway. These are the furniture cluster and the maritime cluster on the west coast of Norway. When international competition increased, the first one declined while the other prospered and became more global. Structural differences explain only partly the different development paths of these clusters. In addition, firms’ strategic actions and the degree of collectively shared visions about international operations mattered for how the clusters developed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 4 , Winter 2015 , pp. 693 - 716
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2016 

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23 Among all the Norwegian regions, this ownership structure was most prominent in Møre og Romsdal. See Leiv Grønnevet, Ei vurdering av eigedomstilhøva i den norske fiskeflåten [Ownership of the Norwegian fishing fleet] (Bergen, 1966). See also the parliamentary acts, Lov om brigde i mellombels lov av 29, Juni 1956 om eigedomsretten til fiske- og fangstfarkostar [Property Rights in the Fishing Fleet Industry Act], Ot.prp.nr. 39 (1967–68), and Lov om regulering av deltakelsen i fisket [Fishery Regulation Act], Ot.prp.nr. 24 (1971–72).

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26 Atle Døssland and Arnljot Løseth, Havfiskeflåten i Møre og Romsdal og Trøndelag Bind 1: Mot fjernare farvatn, 1860–1960 [The history of the deep-sea fishing fleet in Møre and Romsdal and Trøndelag, vol. 1] (Trondheim, 2006).

27 In addition to the literature referred to elsewhere, this reconstruction is based on interviews by Ove Bjarnar and Dag Magne Berge from 2004 to 2006 with veterans in the industry: pioneer skippers of factory trawlers and ring net trawlers; pioneer shipowners within the fishing fleet and the offshore supply fleet; equipment producers and sellers; leading industrialists; former government officials; leaders in the fishery organizations and vessel owners association; a banker; and an accounting firm expert advisor for fisheries. The interview material was accessible to the authors until the project Havfiskeflåten was closed. The interviews used in this article build on the material as it is presented in Bjarnar, Berge, and Melle, Havfiskeflåten i Møre og Romsdal og Trøndelag Bind 2.

28 The number of steel vessels in Møre og Romsdal was more than double the number of such ships in the whole of northern Norway: see e.g., Official Statistics of Norway, Fiskeritellingen [Fishery Censuses] (1971), 2:tables 1, 11; 4:tables 26, 27.

29 Høidal, Periferien som ble sentrum.

30 Even Lange, “Småbedrift og moderne teknologi” [Small firms and modern technology], in Vekst gjennom krise: Studier i norsk teknologihistorie, ed. Francis Sejersted (Oslo, 1982), 209–30.

31 Ove Bjarnar, Arnljot Løseth, and Hallgeir Gammelsæter, “Næringskulturer på Nord-Vestlandet” [Business culture on the west coast of Norway], in Nord-Vestlandet—Liv laga? ed. Hallgeir Gammelsæter, Oddbjørn Bukve, and Arnljot Løseth (Ålesund, 2004), 74–89.

32 Eldar Høidal, Ekornes: Fra springfjær til stressless [The history of Ekornes] (Sykkylven, 2009); Høidal, Periferien som ble sentrum.

33 Overview, 10 Feb. 1962, Box 279, Norwegian Productivity Institute, National Archives, Oslo, Norway (hereafter NPI).

34 Kontoret for områdeplanlegging i Møre og Romsdal, Møre og Romsdal statistiskøkonomisk analyse [Statistical-economic analysis of Møre and Romsdal] (Molde, 1954), 114, table X.

35 Vike, Båt-og skipsbygging.

36 Andersen, “Producing Producers.”

37 Shipbuilding was also far more decentralized to smaller local yards than in any other region. Moreover, during the 1970s, almost one in five producers of equipment (motors, cranes, hydraulics, control systems, etc.) in Norway was located in the region, and one in four producers of fishing gear (lines, trawls, nets, etc.) was operating here. See Bjarnar, Berge, and Melle, Havfiskeflåten i Møre og Romsdal og Trøndelag Bind 2, 320–25.

38 For example, Sunnmørsbanken, a bank that became a major regional player, was set up in 1975, and the shipbuilding industry association Vestlandske Fartøybyggjarlag expanded from 1945. Bjarnar, Berge, and Melle, Havfiskeflåten i Møre og Romsdal og Trøndelag Bind 2, 320–25, 328.

39 See Bedriftstelling 1974, Møre og Romsdal. NOS 1976. A776 [Censuses of establishments] (Oslo, 1976), table 4; Per Ove Smogeli, “Skipsbyggingsindustrien I Møre og Romsdal 1970–1980. En geografisk studie av foretaks tilpasning til endringer i de ytre forhold” [The maritime industry in Møre and Romsdal, 1870–1980], Meddelelser fra Geografisk institutt, Universitetet i Oslo. Ny kulturgeografisk serie Nr. 11 (Oslo, 1983), 73ff., table 5.5.

40 Summary of a meeting of the NPI branch of Sunnmøre, 26 Mar. 1958; Memomrandum from NPI branch of Sunnmøre, 1 Oct. 1959, Box 271, NPI.

41 Amdam, Rolv Petter and Bjarnar, Ove, “Regional Business Networks and the Diffusion of American Management and Organisational Models to Norway, 1945–60,” Business History 39, no. 1 (1997): 79–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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43 Lars Hatlehol, Vinsjemakerne: The Winch Makers (Brattvåg, 1991); Lars Hatlehol, Johan Roald Pettersen, and Kolbjørn Ringstad, Fra handkompressor til X-Range: Sperre, 1938–2013—75 år [The history of Sperre] (Bratvåg, 2013).

44 This passage is largely based on the interviews as they are documented in note 27 and archival sources. First and foremost the authors have drawn extensively on the archives of the regional newspaper journal Sunnmørsposten, which has systematically built up business archives from the postwar period. The archive is organized thematically according to fields like fisheries, marine industry, and maritime industry. Consult Bjarnar, Berge, and Melle, Havfiskeflåten, for details. The journal Norsk fiskerinæring collected data on a national basis but has no thematically organized archive. As above, Havfiskeflåten refers to events by journal number and time of publication. See Sunnmørsposten's archive, Ålesund, the Gunnerus library in Trondheim, and the library of the Norwegian Technical University (NTH, later NTNU).

45 Høidal, Ekornes; Høidal, Periferien som ble sentrum; Eldar Høidal and Anders Häggström, In Movement: The 75th Anniversary of Stokke As (Sykkylven, 2009).

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47 As early as the mid-1940s, some entrepreneurial firms in the region pioneered technological developments in fish detecting in cooperation with Forsvarets Forskningsinsitutt, the defense industry's research institute, and also with Havforskningsinstituttet, a national marine research organization. During the 1960s and 1970s a comprehensive development of nets and trawls was undertaken by several local firms, the technical university in Trondheim, Norges Tekniske Høgskole, the University of Bergen, and the Norwegian School of Business, also in Bergen. Consult Bjarnar, Berge and Melle, Havfiskeflåten, 90–95, 129, 339–55.

48 Andersen, “Producing Producers.”

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50 Harald Grytten, Ørnulf Opdahl, and Per Eide, Maskiners arbeid og henders verk: Ulstein, 1917–1992 [The history of Ulstein, 1917–1992] (Ulstein, 1992).

51 Hatlehol, Vinsjemakerne.

52 Bjarnar, Berge, and Melle, Havfiskeflåten, 328f.

53 See Official Statistics of Norway, Industristatistikk [Industrial statistics] (several editions, Oslo, 1970–1985) for the larger pattern.

54 This is based on an interview with Odd Kjell Sjøvik, 5 May 2001; and a memorandum to the authors from Sjøvik dated 22 June 2006.

55 Bjarnar, Berge, and Melle, Havfiskeflåten, 328.

56 This reconstruction also builds on the organizational archives of the shipowner organizations Fiskebåtredernes Forbund and Aalesunds Rederiforening, both in Ålesund.

57 Ove Bjarnar, “Transformation of Knowledge Flow in Globalizing Regional Clusters,” Møreforsking Molde Working Paper 2010 (Molde, 2010), 2. Interviews with Inge Huse at I. P. Huse, Harøya, May 2008 and May 2014.

58 This pattern is reflected in the archives of a central company in the cluster, Ulstein Group. See for example a series of internal and public newspapers in Ulstein's archives, Ulsteinvik, Norway: Boxes Ulsteinposten, following issues: Spring 1984, Fall 1984, Fall 1988, Nov. 1988, Dec. 1988, Boxes Ulstein Internt: following issues: Feb. 1986, Nov. 1997, Boxes Ulstein info, following issues: 9 Nov. 1993, 6 May 1994, 8 Nov. 1994, 29 Mar. 1995, 6 Apr. 1995, 6 Aug. 2004. The archival research was performed by Lise L. Halse assisted by Ove Bjarnar and the results published in Lise L. Halse and Ove Bjarnar, “The Evolution of the Maritime Cluster in North West Norway,” as paper 1 in Lise L. Halse, “Walking the Path of Change: Globalization of the Maritime Cluster in North West Norway” (PhD diss. in Logistics, Molde University College, 2014), 3.

59 Oterhals et al., “Utviklingen i maritime næringer i Møre og Romsdal.”

60 Ibid.

61 Norwegian Shipowners’ Association, Norske offshorerederier: Skaper verdier lokalt, vinner globalt [The Norwegian offshore vessel industry] (Oslo, 2013).

62 Based on information from the webpages of 63 member companies of the Norwegian Business Association in Shanghai. The member list was downloaded from www.nbash.com on 2 Dec. 2011, and the information was collected from firms’ webpages between 2 to 19 Dec. 2011.

63 Interview Ove Bjarnar with Inge Huse, CEO of IP Huse 22 Apr. 2008.

64 Interview by Ove Bjarnar with Per Olaf Brett, a member of Ulstein's top management team, 15 Apr. 2012.

65 Halse and Bjarnar, “The Evolution of the Maritime Cluster.”

66 Official Statistics of Norway, Historical Statistics 1974 (Oslo, 1978).

67 “Industriens stilling under en nordisk tollunion” [The industry and the Nordic customs union], Memorandum Oct. 1957, Box 177, “Industriens stilling under europeisk frihandelsområde” [The industry and the European free trade agreement], Memorandum 17 Dec. 1957, Box 175, both Industry Section, Ministry of Industries, National Archives, Oslo, Norway.

68 Høidal, Ekornes, 172.

69 Høidal and Häggström, In Movement.

70 Official Statistics of Norway, Historical Statistics. 1 US$ = 7 NOK in this period.

71 Peder Myrstad, En struktur og perspektivvurdering av møbelindustrien på Sunnmøre [The structure of the furniture industry in Sunnmøre] (Ålesund, 1977).

72 The following part is based on an interview by Ove Bjarnar with Peder Myrstad in May 1991, and documents from his private archive.

73 Ove Bjarnar, “Et regionperspektiv på innovasjonspolitikken” [A regional perspective on the innovation policy], in Innovasjonspolitikk, kunnskapsflyt og regional utvikling, ed. Hallgeir Gammelsæter (Trondheim, 2000), 123–43.

74 Official Statistics of Norway, Historical Statistics 1994 (Oslo, 1995).

75 Amdam, Rolv Petter, Lunnan, Randi, and Ramanauskas, Gediminas, “FDI and the Transformation from Industry to Service Society in Emerging Economies: A Lithuanian–Nordic Perspective,” Engineering Economics 51, no. 1 (2007): 22–28Google Scholar.

76 Per Arne Solen, “Norsk industry flagger ut,” Dagbladet, Part 2, 18 Jan. 2003, 12.

77 Teknologibedriftenes Landsforening—Møbel Industri, Årsrapport 2003 [Annual report] (Oslo, 2003).

78 Høidal, Ekornes.

79 Andersen, “Producing Producers.”

80 Grabher, “The Weakness of Strong Ties.”

81 Amdam and Bjarnar, “Regional Business Networks.”

82 Andersen, “Producing Producers.”

83 Blue Maritime Cluster, Breaking Waves, Operation Report 2014 (Ålesund, 2014).

84 Belussi and Sedita, “Life Cycle vs. Multiple Path Dependency.”

85 Elola, Parrilli, and Rabellotti, “The Resilience of Clusters.”

86 Bellandi and Caloffi, “District Internationalisation.”