ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the importance of the spatial and place-specific boundaries that are often associated with the networks. It examines the attempts to implant and catalyse inter-firm networks through public policy intervention. A review of empirical inter-firm studies, based around the network concept, indicates that methodological approaches have incorporated a range of both quantitative and/or qualitative methods. The lack of a general and standardised methodology is partly due to the heterogeneity of inter-firm networks, with their study covering a range of disciplines including sociology, management, industrial relations and regional development. One of the attractions of the network model associated with flexible specialisation and industrial districts is that economic co-ordination appears to take place neither principally in the markets nor hierarchies characterised by Fordism. Network perspectives are seen as contributing to explaining patterns of entrepreneurship, by which it is the social role and embedded social context that facilitate or inhibit the activities of entrepreneurs.
