Entrepreneurial Networks in Local Industrial Development: Empirical Evidences from Turkey

Since the early 1970s, the nature of production has changed quite fundamentally which caused new organizational forms and complex spatial behaviors. Networking that has emerged as a new perspective on the organization of production help greatly to understand the success of businesses, thus the resurgence of regional economies. This book presents the importance of networks in the context of local industrial development and displays a developing country experience. In this context, two localities from Turkey; Denizli and Gaziantep that have achieved a breakthrough in local industrial development is analyzed comparatively on network basis. Throughout the study, the entrepreneurs are considered as the vital actors of networks, and the economic and social embeddedness of their network relations are analyzed by emphasizing the spatial dimensions. A new set of empirical evidence on entrepreneurial networks in local industrial development should be especially useful to researchers in local/regional development, socio- economic and spatial fields or anyone else who may be interested on networks.