Die-hard industrial clusters: network dynamics and resilience

Die-hard resilience refers to the capacity of industrial clusters to survive external shocks, by maintaining or restoring their pre-shock vital functions. We consider this notion to be especially relevant to the context of developing countries and, more broadly, economies faced with significant and frequent economic crises. Against this background, we investigate the network dynamics in an Argentine industry cluster demonstrating die-hard resilience. Using social network analysis and stochastic models of network evolution, we investigate the micro-level social, institutional and agentic drivers of its knowledge network dynamics. Then, using inductive reasoning, we develop an interpretative conceptual framework, which links network dynamics to die-hard resilience. Our work contributes to economic geography research on networks and cluster resilience