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Implementation challenges in cluster policy making: the case of the Andalusian Furniture Technology Centre

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This article analyses the design and implementation of a cluster organisation, the Andalusian Furniture Technology Centre (CITMA). The case of CITMA illustrates how policy processes are inherently political and far more complex than portrayed in conventional accounts based on the linear model of innovation. Policies are, in fact, unpredictable and fraught with uncertainty, opportunity and local specificity. However, acknowledging this complexity is not enough; it has to be unpacked to foster policy learning. To this end, we have opened the black box of the organisation to understand the political process underlying its creation and dissolution. Through this narrative, we shall witness how the technology centre, initially conceived and approved as a publicly funded organisation with the aim of raising SME’s absorption capacity by providing technological services, turned into a semi-public consulting firm focused on selling business services to big companies. The outcome of this policy was precisely the opposite of what had been intended with this initiative and the consequence or the result of a top-down policy approach in which the regional ministry failed to take into account the needs, interests and resistance of the different stakeholders by unilaterally changing the project and the funding model approved by its predecessor. The CITMA case highlights the lack of a multi-disciplinary approach to innovation policy in Andalusia and the fact that innovation policies have been defined and implemented in a hierarchical and siloed fashion with little attempt at policy alignment across different areas and levels of government.

SKU: 0810-90281095976 Category: Tag:

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By José Quesada-Vázquez

This article analyses the design and implementation of a cluster organisation, the Andalusian Furniture Technology Centre (CITMA). The case of CITMA illustrates how policy processes are inherently political and far more complex than portrayed in conventional accounts based on the linear model of innovation. Policies are, in fact, unpredictable and fraught with uncertainty, opportunity and local specificity. However, acknowledging this complexity is not enough; it has to be unpacked to foster policy learning. To this end, we have opened the black box of the organisation to understand the political process underlying its creation and dissolution. Through this narrative, we shall witness how the technology centre, initially conceived and approved as a publicly funded organisation with the aim of raising SME’s absorption capacity by providing technological services, turned into a semi-public consulting firm focused on selling business services to big companies. The outcome of this policy was precisely the opposite of what had been intended with this initiative and the consequence or the result of a top-down policy approach in which the regional ministry failed to take into account the needs, interests and resistance of the different stakeholders by unilaterally changing the project and the funding model approved by its predecessor. The CITMA case highlights the lack of a multi-disciplinary approach to innovation policy in Andalusia and the fact that innovation policies have been defined and implemented in a hierarchical and siloed fashion with little attempt at policy alignment across different areas and levels of government.

page: 113 – 137
Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation
Volume 33, Issue 2

SKU: 0810-90281095976

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