Clusters as an Environment of Competitive Collaboration. A Case Study on the Emerging Apparel Economic Cluster in the Republic of Moldova

The research aims to explore the drivers and barriers that influence the inter-firm competitive collaboration within clusters. In this view, a case study on the emerging apparel cluster in the Republic of Moldova was accomplished. It focused particularly on identifying the types of existing collaboration linkages between firms and evaluating the context-specific factors that inhibit or encourage these linkages. The results suggest that despite the relatively dense agglomeration of firms within the emerging cluster, this does not translate into extensive collaboration networks. Entrepreneurs manifest hesitation toward collaboration and the lack of relational capital, as a common feature of most post-socialist economies, remains a big issue in making the cluster work. This represents a missed opportunity for cluster performance, specifically as the social capital crucially matters for knowledge and innovation to be transferred more readily.