ABSTRACT
The paper aims to investigate the relationships that cluster enterprises develop with their environment through participation in cluster organization (CO). The authors report the findings from a qualitative study carried out in the Lubusz Metal Cluster. The main research strategy is case study. An in-depth individual interview was used to collect the data, and qualitative content analysis and coding for its analysis. The study has shown that cluster enterprises develop relationships with various groups of stakeholders, which include other enterprises, R&D institutions, educational institutions, business environment institutions, and public authorities. Building relationships with each of these groups of stakeholders is based on a different set of goals; it also leads to obtaining a different pool of value-creating benefits, which are jointly formed by all groups of stakeholders. The first-order benefits result directly from the cluster cooperation, while the second-order benefits consist in gradual integration: first in the social dimension, then in the process and organizational dimension, and ending with the integration of the entire industry. The research goes beyond the state-of-the-art knowledge in the concept of industrial clusters, revealing CO as an example of non-technological innovation, which applies in particular to management of external relations with other companies or public institutions.
