Logistics Clusters A study on the Jönköping-Nässjö-Vaggeryd region

Paper within Business Administration

Author: Marcus Näversten Victor Pettersson

Tutor: Sören Eriksson

Jönköping 14 May 2012

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Abstract Purpose - The thesis is based around on of the most commonly used scientific terms in economics today, cluster. Many actors tend to claim that their regions are working clusters and when the Logkomp project was initiated, the authors wanted to research whether a lo-gistics cluster existed in the Jönköping-Nässjö-Vaggeryd region.

Methodology - This research is purely based on the involved actors’ perception whether a cluster exists or not, rather than based on calculations. The actors were interviewed with both short questions with rating from 1-10 and deeper questions where they were allowed to elaborate their answers more freely. Since the project is ran by the municipalities in the region, the municipalities role in the cluster was examined thoroughly and the companies’ perception of cooperation with the municipalities were compared to the municipalities’ perceptions of their own performance.

Conclusions - Based on the interview results, the authors were able to compare the per-ceived situation in the region with academic definitions and models, thus evaluating the level of clusterness. It can be shown that the region is slowly becoming a logistics cluster but there is several important factors that need to be taken into consideration before this can happen. It is also apparent that all involved actors need to pull their weight and there is potential for improvement by all actors.

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Acknowledgements Finally the authors wish to thank their tutor, Sören Eriksson for very helpful insights on the subject and Carl-Gunnar Karlsson as well as the other persons involved in the Logkomp project group. Further on, the authors wish to thank the respondents at the respective companies and in the municipalities.

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Table of Contents 1  Introduction ................................................................................ 1 1.1  Background ............................................................................................ 1 1.2  Delimitations ........................................................................................... 3 1.3  Objectives ............................................................................................... 3 1.3.1  Research questions ................................................................................ 3 1.4  Methodology ........................................................................................... 3 1.4.1  Research strategy .................................................................................. 4 1.4.2  Research approach ................................................................................ 4 1.4.3  Data collection method ........................................................................... 5 1.4.3.1  Questionnaires ................................................................................................................5 1.4.3.2  Interviews ........................................................................................................................5 1.4.3.3  Written sources ...............................................................................................................7 1.4.4  Analysis of data ...................................................................................... 7 1.4.5  Research creditability ............................................................................. 8 1.4.5.1  Reliability .........................................................................................................................8 1.4.5.2  Validity ............................................................................................................................8 1.4.5.3  Objectivity .......................................................................................................................8 1.5  Outline of the thesis ................................................................................ 8 

2  Jönköping-Nässjö-Vaggeryd ................................................... 10 

2.1  Jönköping municipality ......................................................................... 12 2.2  Nässjö municipality ............................................................................... 14 2.3  Vaggeryd municipality .......................................................................... 15 

3  Literature review ....................................................................... 16 

3.1  Clusters and agglomerations ................................................................ 16 3.2  Logistics clusters .................................................................................. 19 3.3  Cluster models ..................................................................................... 20 3.4  Networks .............................................................................................. 22 

4  Results ...................................................................................... 24 4.1  Interviews and questionnaires .............................................................. 24 4.2  Deeper questions ................................................................................. 28 4.3  Politicians’ views on the region ............................................................. 32 4.4  The central railway terminal .................................................................. 33 

5  Discussions .............................................................................. 35 5.1  Companies based on size .................................................................... 35 5.1.1  Large companies .................................................................................. 35 5.1.2  Middle sized companies ....................................................................... 37 5.1.3  Small companies .................................................................................. 38 5.2  Municipality based ................................................................................ 39 5.2.1  Jönköping ............................................................................................. 39 5.2.2  Nässjö .................................................................................................. 40 5.2.3  Vaggeryd .............................................................................................. 42 5.3  Industry based ...................................................................................... 43 5.3.1  Manufacturing companies .................................................................... 43 5.3.2  Logistics companies ............................................................................. 44 5.4  Regional overview ................................................................................ 45 

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6  Conclusions .............................................................................. 49 6.1  Future Research ................................................................................... 50 

7  References ................................................................................ 51 

7.1  Books and articles ................................................................................ 51 7.2  Interviews ............................................................................................. 53 7.3  Internet sources .................................................................................... 53 

8  Appendix ................................................................................... 55 8.1  Appendix A ........................................................................................... 55 8.2  Appendix B ........................................................................................... 57 8.3  Appendix C ........................................................................................... 58 8.4  Appendix D ........................................................................................... 59 8.5  Appendix E ........................................................................................... 60 8.6  Appendix F ........................................................................................... 67 

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Table of figures

Figure 1-1, Methodology, inspired by (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010) .................... 4 Figure 2-1, Railroads and roads leading to the region (Airport, 2012) ............. 10 Figure 3-1, Cluster model, based on (Bathelt, et al., 2004) ............................. 21 Figure 3-2, Porter’s Diamond Model (Porter, 2000b, p20) .............................. 22 Figure 4-1, All companies ............................................................................... 25 Figure 4-2, Large companies .......................................................................... 25 Figure 4-3, Medium sized companies ............................................................. 26 Figure 4-4, Small companies ........................................................................... 26 Figure 4-5, Jönköping Municipality .................................................................. 27 Figure 4-6, Nässjö Municipality ....................................................................... 27 Figure 4-7, Vaggeryd Municipality ................................................................... 27 Figure 4-8, Manufacturing companies ............................................................. 28 Figure 4-9, Logistics companies ...................................................................... 28 Figure 4-10, Comparison Jönköping ................................................................. 32 Figure 4-11, Comparison Nässjö ....................................................................... 33 Figure 4-12, Comparison Vaggeryd .................................................................. 33 Figure 5-1, Cluster model inspired by (Bathelt, et al., 2004). .......................... 46 Figure 5-2, Diamond model for JNV ................................................................ 48 

Table of Tables

Table 1-1, Interview types (Andersen, 1994) ...................................................... 6 Table 2-1, Quick facts Jönköping, (Regionförbundet, 2012) (SCB, 2012)

(Olsson, 2012) ...................................................................................... 12 Table 2-2, Quick facts Nässjö (Regionförbundet, 2012) (SCB, 2012) (Olsson,

2012) .................................................................................................... 14 Table 2-3, Quick facts Vaggeryd (Regionförbundet, 2012) (SCB, 2012) (Olsson,

2012) .................................................................................................... 15 Table 3-1, Comparison table (Rosenfeld, 1997) ................................................ 23 Table 4-1, Frequency of replies ......................................................................... 24 Table 8-1, Employee statistics .......................................................................... 56 

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1 Introduction In Sweden along with other countries worldwide, industrial clusters have become an im-portant vogue. The expression exploded around the 1990’s when Michael E. Porter re-leased his book Competitive Advantage of Nations, and since then a great number of influ-ential persons and policy makers have used this term for both good and less good reasons.

Cluster has become a fashionable word and today many communities and regions are de-termined to create and build industrial clusters in their area. In many cases in Sweden, re-gions claim that they already have an industrial cluster within certain industries. Countless times these so called clusters are not real clusters in a purely academic sense, but agglomer-ations of activities and companies. It is easy to misinterpret the meaning of cluster com-pared to agglomeration, and it’s not hard to understand why, since the academic world is divided regarding what a cluster is and how it can be created.

Policy makers and regions have seen the benefits of being a cluster, now every region wants to be or be part of a cluster. The municipality of Jönköping is a stronghold for logistics and has evolved and grown the last decade, because of its growth, its neighbouring municipali-ties also want to jump on the train before it is too late. This thesis has examined three mu-nicipalities, Jönköping, Nässjö and Vaggeryd (JNV). These three municipalities form a re-gion and are to some extent seen as a cluster, as well as they all to some extent individually wants to be an industrial cluster of some sort.

There is the question whether there is a cluster or an agglomeration in the JNV region and regardless if the region is a cluster or not, how one can enhance and evolve the region to be a cluster or otherwise improve the region. There are several attempts on creating clusters that both have failed and succeeded. Most clusters are the outcome of historical processes but a few are by deliberate create regional and national policies, hence clusters have at least two ways of being created.

Logkomp is a project that seeks to enhance the JNV region, in a total 41 companies from different industries such as logistics and manufacturing have signed up for the project. This project can be seen as a catalyst for creating or improving a cluster. Its purpose is to strengthen the region, and as a side effect that might also help the region to become a clus-ter.

Logpoint is another organization that exists in the region, it is both a company and an as-sociation. The purpose of Logpoint is to stimulate growth in the municipalities of Jönkö-ping and Vaggeryd, the two municipalities that runs this organization.

It is through Logkomp and Logpoint that the authors will seek necessary information for the purpose and research questions of this thesis.

1.1 Background

Within the municipalities of Jönköping, Nässjö and Vaggeryd, logistics operations have a specific importance both when it comes to strategy as well as to employment. Jönköping was the first to exploit this industry, since Jönköping is positioned in a geographically good spot and many companies has realized that. When Nässjö and Vaggeryd saw what Jönkö-ping had become, they also realized that they too were in a good geographically position, where Vaggeryd is directly south of Jönköping along Euro highway 4 and Nässjö is an im-portant railroad center. As the time went by, the municipalities finally recognized the need

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for cooperation and talks between the municipalities started to take place. Today this is a bit of a political game since all municipalities compete individually and at the same time wants to cooperate as one region, JNV. Questions such as where to invest in the region are now much more complicated, is the investment to be made for the large region, JNV or shall they individually compete for the investment. In the long run, seeking investment for the larger region JNV could be the better choice, but the question is, is this idea implanted in all the three municipalities. In other words will companies and politicians work for the region (JNV) or for themselves and take the easy path. Another question is whether con-nections and information flow exist between companies, politicians, government institu-tions and universities within this region to achieve the best possible outcome. The authors aim to seek these kinds of connections and information flow exist.

In order to find an answer to this, the authors made contact with a project called Logkomp through Jönköping International Business School (JIBS), whom also is an advisory partner to the project. The project was regarded as a good foundation for further studies on how companies could cooperate informally. The area south of Jönköping has always been dom-inated by many small companies that cooperate in one way or another and the authors wanted through interviews see if this was true in JNV as well. Later on the organization Logpoint was also contacted by the authors.

Logkomp is a project that is financed by the Swedish ESF-council and controlled by Näss-jö Näringslivsråd AB, Destination Jönköping and Vaggeryds Näringslivsråd. Jönköping In-ternational Business School and Science Park are two interaction partners in the project. Also a total of 41 companies have agreed to be a part of the project. It is these companies that will be examined by the project to seek a better understanding of the region and its network. It’s a large project that started 2011 and will end in July 2013 (Logkomp, 2012).

The project seeks to enhance Jönköping – Nässjö – Vaggeryd region within certain areas such as:

Develop internal logistics, streams of goods and distribution processes. Take advantage of the geographical location and growth potential. Benchmark oth-

er similar areas on a national and international level. Develop leaders and organizations within process development and personal de-

velopment. Develop clusters between logistics companies and manufacturing companies.

(Logkomp, 2012)

By enhancing these areas, the project expects that it will strengthen and favor the compa-nies which will lead to a region with a better competitive advantage.

In 2009 Logpoint, a joint venture between Jönköping and Vaggeryd municipalities was founded and it aims at developing and strengthening growth and development of the area (LogPoint, 2012). Apart from the company, there is also an association for companies in the region, called Logpoint business network and these companies were also used as a base for interviews.

By having these companies as a foundation for interviewing and questioning, the authors hope to find out more about this region, JNV, regarding information flow, connections with governmental institutions and universities. By extracting this information it could be

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possible to see how this region as a whole, JNV and as individual municipalities thinks about each other when it comes down to doing business.

The concept of clusters is rather hard to define and one can ask if the involved parties in the region strive towards being a cluster are aware of what it means. The will to be a cluster could also be a way of promoting themselves even if the individual companies would actu-ally benefit from working isolated.

Another question that will be studied is the debate regarding the Swedish Transport au-thority’s decision where a new central railway terminal will be located in the region. There have been a lot of writings about this terminal in the local newspaper, Jönköpings Posten, and these articles will be studied to determine at what level the three municipalities will co-operate and what effect this could have on the local companies.

1.2 Delimitations

This thesis will only focus on companies within the Logkomp and Logpoint projects and aims to have an even distribution between companies in different industries, sizes and geo-graphical spread within the region. The only municipalities covered in this thesis are Jön-köping, Nässjö and Vaggeryd. This thesis is based on the interviewed companies’ percep-tion of cooperation and thus only qualitative data. There has been no analysis of quantita-tive data such as input-output analyses or through any kind of financial perspective.

The interviewed companies for the thesis are rather limited in numbers, 17 companies, and overall it was very hard to come into contact with the companies in the region. Many of the companies requested to participate anonymously and thus no company names are disclosed in the thesis.

1.3 Objectives

This thesis aims to find out how logistics operations in JNV are a cluster or an agglomera-tion and how to develop the cooperation between companies as well as companies and governmental institutions.

1.3.1 Research questions

1) Based on the findings in this thesis can the current situation in the Jönköping – Nässjö – Vaggeryd region be described as a logistics cluster?

2) How do the companies and the politicians experience the cooperation within the region and how can this be improved?

1.4 Methodology

This section outlines the methodology used in order to meet the purpose of this thesis. The first part focuses on research strategy and data collection method, whilst the last part con-tains an analysis of data and research credibility.

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Figure 1-1, Methodology, based on (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010)

1.4.1 Research strategy

According to Denscombe (2009) there are four main method strategies that can be used when conducting research; questionnaires, interviews, observations and written sources. These strategies can be used to gather empirical data, in order to achieve the purpose of the thesis. Further on he states that one can use more than one of these strategies, if that is the case, this is called triangulation. The point of triangulation is to get a broader point of view and that the researcher gets a better understanding since he uses different sources. Meth-odological triangulation is according to Denscombe (2009) is the most common form of triangulation.

This thesis will analyze whether the region JNV is a pure agglomeration or a more devel-oped cluster with all additional factors that differentiates a cluster from the more basic pure agglomeration. Further on the thesis will also analyze how a cluster can further stregthen the development in the region. In order to complete this, the authors are using methodo-logical triangulation, meaning the authors used questionnaires, interviews and written sources. Questionnaires were sent out to both companies and policy makers in the JNV-region and interviews were conducted with companies from the project Logkomp and through contacts with the association Logpoint.

1.4.2 Research approach

According to Saunders (2009) there are both Quantitative and Qualitative approaches to deal with how the research should be undertaken. The quantitative approach is more statis-tical and refers to numerical research gathering. By choosing the qualitative approach Saunders (2009) states that this will include in-depth interviews and dealing with non-numerical figures.

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According to Ghauri and Grønhaug (2010) the main difference between qualitative and quantitative research is not the “quality” but how it is conducted. Meaning the procedure of how the empirical data is collected. They further state some main differences between qualitative and quantitative approaches. A qualitative approach has emphasis on under-standing, observations and measurements in natural settings and a holistic perspective. A quantitative approach on the other hand has emphasis on testing, verification and con-trolled measurement. According to Ghauri & Grønhaug (2010) these differences affect the data that is collected.

The research in this thesis will use a qualitative approach in order to answer the research questions. As mentioned above a qualitative approach allows a more in-depth interview, hence, that is one of the key elements in this thesis. Qualitative approach will give the au-thor the ability to go deeper into the subject and to get a better understanding, in other words, a holistic view.

1.4.3 Data collection method

There are mainly two different kinds of data; primary and secondary. Primary data is data that is published for the first time and is not interpreted in any way prior to the publishing. Examples of this can be interviews, observations, etc. Secondary on the other hand is data that has been published before and could be interpreted by the prior authors. Books, ency-clopedias and such materials can be considered secondary (Bell, 2006).

This thesis is primarily focused on primary data, where interviews with companies from the LogPoint and Logkomp projects play a major role. The background for this thesis is based on statistics and history of the region, the frame of reference is based on the literature re-view and finally the information regarding the container terminals are based on newspaper articles, thus secondary data.

1.4.3.1 Questionnaires

There are multiple sorts of questionnaires and several different occasions when it is justi-fied to utilize this research method. Common factors however are that the questions must be related directly to the research, the respondents must receive the same set of questions and they have to answer the questions directly (Denscombe, 2009).

The authors chose to use questionnaires in some parts of the data collecting process where standardized answers were needed and there was not enough data to motivate an interview. In order to get the policy makers’ opinons and views of cooperation, and the structures within the region, questionnaires were sent out to one local government commissioner in each municipality. This was done via e-mail since the availability of these persons was ra-ther limited. The questionnaire can be found in Appendix B. In order to achieve a better result the authors had a two-way communication, both e-mail and by phone with the spe-cial selected companies. This was done in order to clarify questions or the purpose of the questions, even if the authors did descibe the purpose and clarification regarding some questions in each e-mail to avoid missunderstanding.

1.4.3.2 Interviews

While questionnaires are good for collecting standardized information from several re-spondents, interviews can be used to gather deeper knowledge and let the respondent de-velop their answers further. Interviews are especially good to use when the researchers want to know about the respondents perceptions or views, subjects that can be hard to an-swer in standardized forms (Denscombe, 2009). Both Denscombe (2009) and Andersen

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(1994) mention that different interviews can be categorized into four different categories, with respect to the degree of standardization and the degree of structuration.

Table 1-1 Interview types (Andersen, 1994)

Structuration

+ -

Standardization + 1 2

- 3 4

The type 1-interview is fully structured and standardized and this type of interview can al-most be compared with a questionnaire. The interviewer asks a series of questions and of-fers predetermined answers to these and forces the respondent to answer in a very stand-ardized way (Denscombe, 2009).

The type-2 interview is equally standardized but less structured. The interviewer may change the order of the questions and the respondent is freer to elaborate their answers (ibid.).

The type 3-interview is very structured but the questions are not standardized and this type of interview is often common in market research, where one wants to know more about customers’ attitudes (Andersen, 1994).

The type-4 interview is unstructured and unstandardized, the interviewer merely works as a catalyst and the respondent is entirely free to elaborate and discuss their own answers and thoughts (Denscombe, 2009).

Defining exactly which one of these types a certain series of interviews belong to is often difficult since they tend to overlap each other. The interviews in this thesis do however mostly belong to the second type of interviews. The questions are standardized in order to get the answers regarding the same areas but the respondents are freer to answer some of the questions. For the first set of questions, the respondents answered on a scale from 1-10 and this will give a good and objective overview for the results. The latter set of questions is more open-ended so that feelings and thoughts could be expressed.

Since the Logkomp project and Logpoint had defined contact lists for the companies in-volved, those companies were used as respondents. The interviews took place at the re-spective companies with both authors present together with the respondents. The answers were written down so that no information would be lost and answers could be rechecked. The interviews were conducted during the month of April.

The authors scheduled the interviews to be no longer than one hour, this to keep it short and consistent. Otherwise it’s easy to drift away from the subject and the answers might be different. These interviews were not that difficult to answer, meaning the interviewee didn’t need to prepare before the interview. Often the interviewee was either CEO or head of lo-gistics department. The authors tried to interview the same category of title persons in or-der to achieve a result relevant to the thesis, since totally different positions with compa-nies can give different answers.

In order to get the best possible result, the authors selected the companies with a purpose, namely to have a waged number of companies from the same municipality and industry. Also that these companies differed when it comes to size, since this also could have a huge

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impact on the answers. Since the authors first had got in contact with the project Logkomp, the initial idea was to only interview these companies. These companies have showed an interest in developing the region, and that these 41 companies are spread out between the three municipalities made them excellent interview material. The authors spoke with the Logkomp project leader and decided that he could point out some of these companies that were more willing to do interviews, and that he thought would have the time and resources to take care of two students for an interview. The authors received an e-mail from the Logkomp project leader where he had pointed out 12 of these 41 companies. In this e-mail the authors received contact information such as names, cellphone number, which company they worked for and e-mail. At this point the authors believed that they had sufficient number of companies. The authors were wrong, after that the companies had been e-mailed, only seven companies gave an reply, were four of these seven ended up with an interview, two sent their answers via e-mail and one rejected both to do an inter-view or to send an e-mail with the answers. The remaining five companies did not answer at all. The authors therefore contacted the project leader once again and received all 41 companies from the project Logkomp and selected another 26 companies, which they sent e-mails to.

At this point the authors decided that they had insufficient number of companies to get an accurate result, they therefore through discussion with their mentor decided to contact an-other organization which also had a network of companies connected to them. This organ-ization is called Logpoint and it focuses on companies from the municipalities of Jönkö-ping and Vaggeryd. This was good initiative since most of the replying companies from Logkomp were from Vaggeryd or Nässjö, this gave the authors more companies from Jön-köping and equalized the number of companies from the different municipalities which conforms to the authors aim. Through Logpoint the authors e-mailed another 27 compa-nies which gave sufficient amount of answers and interviews.

1.4.3.3 Written sources

Apart from questionnaires and interviews, there are two other kinds of data collecting methods, observations and written sources. In this thesis the authors have chosen not to use observations but rather use written sources instead. Written sources can sometimes be regarded as indirect observations, another researcher may have made observations and rec-orded these. Written sources can consist of statistics, newspapers, protocols from meetings, etc. (Denscombe, 2009).

Statistics and history regarding each municipality and the region has been studied in order to gain deeper knowledge about the region and possibly find factors that have helped the region to attract companies. Newspapers have also been studied to find out more about the political play behind the scenes regarding the question of the central container terminal.

1.4.4 Analysis of data

The authors first looked at the short questions where the respondents graded their answer from 1-10 and with these results the authors produced a radar chart for the short ques-tions. The deep questions are summarized in the results section and are later analyzed in the discussion part. The choice of radar charts was made due to that radar charts is one of graph types that displays the results with a connectivity between the questions. This means that they present a better holistic view of the results than a bar chart would do. The deep questions were used to benchmark and find common denominators with the literature re-view in order to achieve the purpose of this thesis. The answers from these questions are more complex and could not been displayed as radar charts. The results from these ques-

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tions gave the authors a deeper understanding of the companies’ views of the topic of these questions.

1.4.5 Research creditability

There are three important aspects of academic research that aims to ensure that the re-search is credible and relevant as a research document which can be used for further stud-ies. These aspects are described below.

1.4.5.1 Reliability

It is very important that when one conducts research, the results from the research must be reliable. This means that either the same researcher or another researcher can reach the same conclusion even if the methods differ (Andersen, 1994)

The number of companies interviewed can be regarded as a limiting factor when it comes to reliability but the fact that most companies did answer rather coherent, the authors can assume that the views of the companies’ can be applied to a the other companies in the re-gion.

The answers from the respondents were in Swedish which the authors translated into Eng-lish. However, since the answers are rather short, the translation errors are very limited and the authors verified the translations with each other.

1.4.5.2 Validity

A researcher can collect huge amounts of information but it is important that the research-er only collects the information that is needed for the purpose of the study and verifies that the data that has been collected can help the research in question. If the research can an-swer the research questions, the research has a high degree of validity (ibid.).

All questions in the interviews are connected to the area of agglomerations, clusters, coop-eration. The shorter interviews also enabled the authors to limit the respondents to only answer the questions and not drift away from the subject too much.

1.4.5.3 Objectivity

The research ought to be conducted on an unprejudiced base where the author’s values do not influence the research result. The interpretation of the result should be left to the read-ers and the degree of reliability must be high in order to allow other researchers to find the same results (ibid.).

Even though the Logkomp project is run by affiliates to the municipality, the authors are writing the thesis independently and do not have any winning in skewing the results in a positive direction for the municipalities.

1.5 Outline of the thesis

The first chapter – Introduction – gives a background to the subject of interest with a prob-lem discussion, followed by, delimitations, objectives, research questions, methodology and ends with outline of the chapter.

The second chapter – Jönköping-Nässjö-Vaggeryd - explains these municipalities in more de-tail.

The third chapter – Literature review – provides the necessary theory of clusters.

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The fourth chapter – Results – contains the findings from the interviews.

The fifth chapter - Discussion – presents the authors thoughts about the result and thesis overall, which then are connected to the literature review.

The last chapter – Conclusions – concludes the major topics of the thesis.

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2 Jönköping-Nässjö-Vaggeryd The Jönköping – Nässjö – Vaggeryd region is considered as the third best logistics location in Sweden based on factors such as geographical location, infrastructure, logistics area, range of logistics services, cooperative climate and price/availability of land. Areas where the region did have it lowest scores, although high compared to other regions in Sweden, and therefore need improvements in include infrastructure, price/availability of land and cooperative climate (Logistik, 2012).

The geographic location is excellent, located in the south of Sweden with more than one third of the Swedish population within 200km from the region and 100 million people in Northern Europe within 24hours by truck. Passing through the region is the European route, E4, which connects the region with Malmö in the south and Linköping, Stockholm and northern Sweden. Riksväg 40 (National Highway 40) that connects the region and Gothenburg is currently being upgraded to a divided highway and is scheduled to be com-pleted 2015 (LogPoint, 2012).

The railway link between Malmö and Stockholm, Södra stambanan (Southern Main Line) passes through the region and Jönköpingsbanan (Jönköping Line) connects the region to the other major rail line in the south of Sweden, Västra Stambanan (Western Main Line). The government is also investigating the possibility to construct a high speed railway link, Götalandsbanan (Götaland Line), between Gothenburg and Stockholm that will pass through the Region, however this project is currently quiescent due to lack of funding (Trafikverket, 2012).

Jönköping Airport offers daily flights to Stockholm as well as numerous cargo flights across Sweden. Scandinavia’s largest port, Port of Gothenburg and the Port of Norrköping is located within 200km from the region.

Figure 2-1, Railroads and roads leading to the region (Airport, 2012)

Several logistics companies has located in the region, for example DB Schenker, DHL, Aditro, Swedish Post and Bring and also numerous retail companies have their distribution centers in the region, for example IKEA, El-Giganten, Jysk, Expert, Kinnarps, Rusta and many more (Nässjö, 2012; Vaggeryd, 2012; LogPoint, 2012).

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One way to research whether a specific work sector is considered specialized in a certain region, one can calculate the location quotient (LQ). For a sector in a specific region to be considered specialized, the location quotient has to be larger than 1 (Isserman , 2007). Based on statistics from Regional Development Council of Jönköping County, the industry sector “Transportation and storage” in Jönköping, Vaggeryd and Nässjö has an average lo-cation quotient of 1,3 and in the manufacturing sector the quotient is 1,75 (Regionförbundet, 2012)

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2.1 Jönköping municipality Table 2-1, Quick facts Jönköping, (Regionförbundet, 2012) (SCB, 2012) (Olsson, 2012)

Quick facts Jönköping

Population 128 305

Area(km2) 1489

Workforce 65931

Net Commuting streams (2009)

+3742

LQ1 (2010) “Transportation

and storage”

1.35

LQ1 (2010) “Manufacturing

industry”

1.07

Jönköping is the largest city in the region and the 10th largest city in Sweden and also the administrative city in Jönköping Län (Jönköping County). The city was founded in 1284 as a market place for local salesmen and during the following centuries the market evolved and Jönköping had a strategic position in the persistent wars between Sweden and Den-mark. During the 16th century King Gustav Vasa ordered the construction of a castle that stood in the city center for 300 years. During this period a number of companies were founded in the neighboring city Huskvarna, the most prominent one that still exists is Husqvarna AB. Husqvarna started with the construction of weapons and later moved in to the production of motorcycles and today it is the world’s largest producer of outdoor products such as chainsaws, lawn mowers, etc. (Jönköping, 2012a).

The construction of the Göta Kanal, a west to east water link through Sweden, was com-pleted in the beginning of the 1800s and due to cholera epidemics during the mid-1850s the infrastructure in the city was further improved. In 1845 the Jönköpings Tändsticksfab-rik (Jönköping match factory) was founded and Jönköping became virtually the only match producing city in the world. The importance of the match industry declined in the early 1900s and the industry was shifted towards paper and metal works. In the 1960s Elmia was founded and is today one of the largest trade fairs in northern Europe. Elmia hosts two of the largest trade fairs of its kind, Elmia Subcontractor and Elmia Wood and also the world’s largest computer festival, Dreamhack (Jönköping, 2012a).

The 1970s were an interesting period for Jönköping, the city boundaries expanded rapidly by the merger of Jönköping, Huskvarna and several smaller municipalities. Further three national administration offices relocated to Jönköping from the capital, Stockholm and in 1977, what would become, the Jönköping University was founded. 1985 the Swedish ar-

1 For description and calculation of LQ please refer to Appendix A

100 000

105 000

110 000

115 000

120 000

125 000

130 000

Jönköping's population

13

my’s sixth artillery regiment, A6, was shut down and two years later the A6 Shopping cen-ter was opened. In the vicinity of the old A6 regiment the county hospital Ryhov was opened one year after the A6 Shopping center, partly in old regiment buildings (Jönköping, 2012a).

Jönköping University became a University foundation in 1994 and moved to a new city center location in 1997 and today employs 800 persons and has around 12000 students in areas such as engineering, business, health science, education and communication (Jönköping, 2012b).

In the area Torsvik, south of the city center, there is a high concentration of logistics com-panies. More than 3500 persons are employed in around 100 companies such as; IKEA, El-Giganten, Electrolux, Aditro DHL and more. The local government expects this area to double within 10 years, from 300ha to 600ha (LogPoint, 2012).

14

2.2 Nässjö municipality Table 2-2, Quick facts Nässjö (Regionförbundet, 2012) (SCB, 2012) (Olsson, 2012)

Quick facts Nässjö

Population 29 298

Area(km2) 933

Workforce 12961

Net Commuting streams (2009)

-727

LQ2 (2010) “Transportation

and storage”

1.61

LQ2 (2010) “Manufacturing

industry”

1.44

Nässjö was until the 1850s primarily populated by farmers and lodgers but when the first major rail line, Södra stambanan (the Southern main line) was completed in 1864, Nässjö started growing rapidly. In 1863 Nässjö landskommun (Nässjö rural area) was founded and through a number of reorganizations during the late 1800s and early 1900s, in 1914 the town of Nässjö was founded. The railroad brought a number of industries, mainly in the hardware and wood industries. Nässjö stolfabrik (Nässjö chair factory) and Bodafors Mö-belfabrik (Bodafors furniture factory) and Eldon are some of the companies founded in the early 1900s. The community continued to grow and in 1971 the town of Nässjö and several neighboring rural areas merged into what today is Nässjö municipality (Nässjö, 2012a).

The population growth in Nässjö has stopped and Nässjö saw a decline during the 1990s in its population, however the population has stabilized after the year 2000. Thanks to its lo-cation and access to multiple railway lines, Nässjö has attracted several companies’ central warehouses, such as Jysk, Rusta and Tura Scandinavia (Nässjö, 2012b).

2 For description and calculation of LQ please refer to Appendix A

28500

29000

29500

30000

30500

31000

31500

19901992199419961998200020022004200620082010

Nässjö's Population

15

2.3 Vaggeryd municipality Table 2-3, Quick facts Vaggeryd (Regionförbundet, 2012) (SCB, 2012) (Olsson, 2012)

Quick facts Vaggeryd

Population 13 160

Area(km2) 830

Workforce 5894

Net Commut-ing streams

(2009)

-831

LQ3 (2010) “Transportation

and storage”

1.11

LQ3 (2010) “Manufacturing

industry”

2.42

Vaggeryd has grown thanks to its ample supply of wood, iron-ore and water, materials that has defined the industry in the area since the late 1600s. Iron works dominated the areas industry until the late 1800s when several smaller iron works in other regions merged and the competition became too strong and the iron works in Vaggeryd changed into produc-ing pulp. At the same time Vaggeryd became connected to other cities via railroads and several furniture producing factories opened (Gustavsson, 2006).

During the 1900s several smaller towns and rural areas merged into Vaggeryd municipality and the business world would become dominated by a large number of small specialized companies, primarily within advanced metal processing and carpentries (Gustavsson, 2006).

Today Vaggeryd is still dominated by many small companies, however some larger compa-nies such as Kinnarps, Proton Engineering, Swedese and Expert’s Nordic distribution warehouse have established in the area (Vaggeryd, 2012).

Vaggeryd has ample infrastructural possibilities to attract new companies because of its close proximity to Jönköping, 36km, and Växjö, 93km. The Euro highway 4 runs through the municipality and it has good railroad connections with Jönköping and Värnamo (Vaggeryd, 2012).

3 For description and calculation of LQ please refer to Appendix A

11800

12000

12200

12400

12600

12800

13000

13200

13400

19901992199419961998200020022004200620082010

Vaggeryd's population

16

3 Literature review This chapter contains theory parts of agglomeration, clusters and networks. Both agglom-eration and clusters can be described as a part of economic geography. The two scientific terms are linked to each other but they are not the same thing. The agglomeration part can be seen as a pre theory for clusters since the word and subject cluster has evolved from what academics call agglomeration.

According to Eriksson (2011) economic geography and some other economic and social sciences are linked to a theoretical method which aims to clarify local, regional and national economic growth in terms of clusters. The reintroduced interest in agglomeration and lo-calized economic growth research arises from various fields of studies, but ideas and thoughts about local concentration have a much older starting point. Studies in local ag-glomeration and the degree to which individuals or firms are connected to a social network converge through expressions such as clusters, industrial districts, innovative milieu and networks. But not every agglomeration of firms in the same or related regions can neces-sarily be seen as cluster.

3.1 Clusters and agglomerations

Clusters were first introduced by Marshall in the late 19th century when he found that spe-cialized firms tend to located close to one another. According to Eriksson (2011) Marshall found that people and companies clustered together where they produce a geographic con-centration of expertise and economic commotion. He observed that advantages from this concentration were formed through sharing of skills within a certain profession within a neighborhood. According to Avnimelech and Teubal (2010) Marshall defines an industrial district as “a geographic area containing a number of firms producing similar products, in-cluding firms operating at different stages of a production process that gain advantages through co-location” (Avnimelech & Teubal, 2010, p. 142). According Avnimelech & Teu-bal (2010) Marshall states three main advantages of industrial clustering: (1) the develop-ment of a local pool of specialized labor and the availability of specialized input factors; (2) sharing the cost of investments in infrastructure and economy of scale in production and (3) efficient information flows. This research was further supported by many scholars in the 20th century, most notable Schumpeter (1939), Dahmén (1950), Liepietz (1974), Piore and Sabel (1984) and finally Porter (1990). Joseph Schumpeter confirms Marshall’s original study in the 1930s, but underlined certain areas. About 20 years later the Swedish profes-sor, Erik Dahmén, made a contribution to what will later in time will be labeled as clusters, which had an impact on later studies within the field (Eriksson, 2011).

In the 1980s Giacomo Becattini experimented with Marshalls ideas of geographical ag-glomeration specialized firms that Marshall mentions as `industrial districts`. He widened the perspective of not only analyzing economic effects of agglomeration but to include so-cial, cultural and institutional foundations on local economic and industrial growth. Ac-cording to Eriksson (2011), Becattini (1989) defines industrial districts as a “particular type of agglomeration, characterized by a localized ‘thickening’ of inter-industrial relationships which is reasonably stable over time” (p 35). Later in the 1990s, Markusen (1996) rejected this new industrial district, in its either Marshallian or more recent Italianate form. Instead she identified three additional districts; a hub-and-spoke industrial district, a Satellite plat-form, and the state-anchored district. According to Markusen (1996) the hub-and-spoke industrial district is dominated by one or several large companies, which has significant re-lations with companies’ outside this district. Further on she mentions that vital investments decisions are made within the district, but then channeled out globally. Compared with the

17

hub-and-spoke district, the satellite industrial platforms are instead dominated by large, ex-ternally owned parent firms. Here the decisions are taken externally instead of locally com-pared to hub-and-spoke districts. Further she states that this district has a high degree of cooperation and has much contact with companies outside the district, especially the parent company. The third district State-anchored industrial district Markusen (1996) describes as being dominated by large governmental institutions such as military bases, universities which then are surrounded by suppliers and support businesses. The key investments are made by different levels of governments, both internal and external. Further the coopera-tion and level of contact and information sharing is high and done via organizations out-side the district. In the 1990s the demand or interest in geographical clustering grew dra-matic, which led to several contributions to the field and one of the major contributions was made by Michael Porter. He analyzed Marshall’s studies and simplified it and according to Porter (2000) agglomeration is a concentration of firms and that can be seen either as an industry level or a various urban economy. Further he states that agglomeration key ele-ment is cost minimization due to closeness of inputs or markets. Later on he states that the geographic scope of a cluster can be anything from a single city or province to a country or even a group of countries. He also mentions that clusters can take various forms depending on their complexity. Later on it states that clusters do have common ingredients. Porter (2000) moreover concludes that the majority of clusters contain some kind of end-product or service companies, suppliers of specialized inputs, components, machinery, financial in-stitutions or firms in related industries. Further it implies that clusters also contains firms in downstream industries such as; producers of complementary products and specialized in-frastructure providers. Clusters tend to include a number of institutions, governmental or similar institutions that generate specialized training, education, information, research and technical support. Those government departments that on a regular basis significantly in-fluence a cluster can be considered a part of it.

Another view on Porters model and clusters is, according to Shaver and Flyer (2000) that companies with a good human capital, technology, training programs and suppliers or dis-tributors tends to isolate themselves from clustering and that companies with the opposite characteristics tend to cluster. Further on companies with goods characteristics have more to lose in terms of spillover, meaning their competitive advantage disappears when they cluster. Companies with poor characteristics on the other hand have more to win when en-tering clusters.

General clusters occur when human processes are likely to agglomerate to form urban are-as which will take advantage of economies of scale which in turn will enhance the growth of the urban area in such way that a variety of infrastructural, economic and cultural facili-ties are encouraged to be built. Further Eriksson suggests that the way of defining a cluster can be done by dividing the clusters into two major types, namely 'Generalized clusters' and 'Specialized clusters'. (Eriksson, 2011).

Specialized clusters on the other hand emerges because of firms in same or similar indus-tries locates in the same area to form what is previous mentioned as “Industrial districts” or ´spaces` which according to Eriksson (2011) also are labeled as localization economies. In addition it states that Special cluster’s foundation arises from firms executing different but linked functions within the cluster.

Further he states that clusters generates two types of interdependencies namely; traded in-terdependencies and untraded interdependencies. Traded interdependencies refer to direct transactions between firms, in forms of specialized intermediate products and services. Un-traded interdependencies refer to benefits that are not tangible and can vary from a pool of

18

labor to an institution like universities, business associations or government institutions. This means that the connection and interaction between firms in a cluster that generate un-traded interdependencies are more connected (Eriksson, 2011).

More and more governments on all levels have noticed the benefits of clusters and have in-stituted policies to promote the creation of clusters. However, there is a debate among re-searchers if clusters really can be created, or if they only can grow organically and that all forms of government intervention is bad. Prior research has shown that many clusters only function as long as the government can provide funding for the interventions they made in order to start the cluster (Enright, 1998).

Depending on the degree of intervention, examples of what the government can provide include offering tax exemptions, reviewing the business climate, provide information on clients and competitors, provide infrastructure, training, etc. More advanced interventions include setting up product developing platforms or providing economic services, these are often linked to local universities. Based on how much the government engages in the clus-ter creation, Enright (1998) classifies government as either catalytic or interventionist.

According to Enright (1998) clusters can be organic, transplant or hybrid based. The or-ganic cluster is when one focuses on the indigenous local industries and aims to strengthen the ties between these. Transplant clusters on the other hand aims at attracting companies from the outside to the region in order to strengthen the local economy. Finally there is the hybrid cluster which can be either an organic region that focuses on attracting more firms or a transplant region that has grown and created an organic mass.

Further, Enright (1998) identifies four different states of clusters; working, latent, potential and wishful thinking clusters. If firms in a specific region have competition and coopera-tion with each other the state of the cluster can be regarded as a working cluster. Often many companies are located close to each other but don’t know about other local compa-nies or they lack a unified vision for the future. However, they do benefit slightly from the positive parts of clusters and therefore these regions can be considered latent clusters. If the region might have some of the prerequisites for a cluster but missing some of the more important ones, it becomes a potential cluster. Finally the wishful thinking cluster is a poli-cy driven cluster where the government chooses an industry in an area and supports this and hopes that it will become a working cluster.

There is no doubt that the word cluster is hugely discussed topic today. Since it is a widely spoken topic many researches and academic personnel have analyzed clusters and by that interpreted the subject in various forms. However, the concept of clusters is somewhat di-luted, especially when non-academic organizations use the term. The Swedish globalization council for example defines clusters as merely agglomerations of companies, research insti-tutes, government agencies, etc. without any organized cooperation or any specific linkage (Ketels, 2009). Another Swedish organization, Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, puts more emphasis on what they call a “holistic perspective on regional devel-opment”, which focuses on developing a trade mark for the regional, labor market policies and other political issues (Klustergruppen, 2001).

According to Martin and Sunley (2003) “Clusters, it seems, have become a world-wide fad, a sort of academic and policy fashion item” (p 2). They further state that Porter is one of the key elements to why clusters have become such a fashion word not only for companies but for policy makers around the world. They continue on by saying that Porter (1990) was consulted by these policy makers around the world in order to help them identify their na-

19

tion’s or region’s key clusters, or how to promote them. Moreover they conclude that there are too many variations and forms of clusters that have made the concept vague and intan-gible. Hence, they mean that a subject as elusive as clusters cannot have an universal and precise model of how agglomeration is associated with regional and local economic growth. According to Clark, Feldman, and Gertler (2000) Porter states that it was during the 1990s that many of today’s regional clusters were created. Obviously there are many perceptions of what a cluster or industrial districts are. This thesis only mentions some of them, which can be read below.

According to Avnimelech and Teubal (2010) Marshall defines an industrial district as “a geographic area containing a number of firms producing similar products, including firms operating at different stages of a production process that gain advantages through co-location” (Avnimelech & Teubal, 2010, p. 142).

Porter’s definition is the most commonly used today and it is: “a cluster is a geographically group of interconnected companies and associated institutions in a particular field, linked by commonalities and complementarities” (Porter, 1998, p. 199).

There are other definitions of cluster, according to Eriksson (2011) Doeringer and Terkla defines clusters as ”industrial clusters are a variation on the theme of agglomeration econ-omies and the identification of clusters starts with linkages and proximity; and becomes dynamic through face-to-face collaboration economies” (p36). Furthermore Eriksson ex-presses that, to Cooke and Huggins (2003) a cluster represents “geographically proximate firms in vertical and horizontal relationships involving a localized enter prized support in-frastructure with shared development vision for business growth” (p 52).

According to Eriksson (2011), Cooke and Huggins’ definition differs from Porter’s since Cooke and Huggins’ definition refers to a cluster where firms share common goals and are more connected to each other than in Porter’s definition.

3.2 Logistics clusters

Eriksson (2009) states that ”Whereas there is a huge literature and a continuous debate on the role of various clusters, the combination of localised agglomerations and the distribu-tion and logistics industries rarely makes any appearance on the stage”(p 77).

Logistics clusters can according to Sheffi (2010) contain three different types of companies; pure logistics companies such as 3PLs, freight forwarders, specialists, etc. The second type of company is a company with logistics intensive operations such as distributers or manu-facturers where most of the value added operations can be considered logistical. The last type of company is a company that serves the logistics companies, such as vehicle mainte-nance, IT and lawyers.

Sheffi (2010) further states that companies that do locate in regions with logistics clusters benefit from both cluster advantages in general as well as logistics specific advantages such as geographical location and infrastructure. Logistics clusters are often formed around air-port or seaports but can also be formed at other location as long as there are possibilities for intermodal transportation. Specific areas for and cooperation in a logistics cluster can for example be using each other’s warehouse or machinery capacity. The second type of companies in the logistics clusters; the manufacturers or distributors also gain from having more choices of partners in close proximity. The third type of companies gain from having a large customer base.

20

There are several organizations that claim to be a ‘logistics cluster’, for example Logistics in Wallonia, who states that their missions are;

To encourage and cradle innovation through cooperation between the companies and universities.

To provide networking and training for the companies involved

To promote the region and thus promoting the individual companies.

(Wallonia, 2012)

There is a similar project in, Luxembourg, Cluster for Logistics Luxembourg which strives after the same ideas as the Wallonia project but also explicitly mentions creating a unified assisting voice towards the government regarding developments in infrastructure and regu-lations (Deloitte, 2012).

3.3 Cluster models

According to Bathelt, et al,. (2004) clusters have two dimensions, horizontal and vertical. Where the horizontal dimension refers to those firms that produce the same goods. Ac-cording to Porter (2000a) a strong rivalry between companies is a good thing in the initial stages of forming a cluster. Further the benefits comes from co-location, meaning since they all are located close to each other, the companies compares quality and monitoring each other. This rivalry creates product differentiation and variations in products, in order to be one step ahead of its competitor.

The vertical cluster dimension involves firms that are connected through a network of sup-pliers, service and customer relations. When an agglomeration or a specialized industrial cluster has been formed it generates specialized demand such as services and supplies. It is at this point that the horizontal dimension is created. The co-location of similar companies has created a market for other kinds of companies, which then tend to locate close to this market. For example suppliers locating close to this new market can benefit from econo-mies of scale, since a large group of similar companies are located close to each other (Bathelt, et al., 2004).

According to Bathelt, et al., (2004) economies of scale is not enough to understand the processes that occur within a cluster. It has been showed that coherence, connectivity, and inter-firm communication play an important role in processes of innovation and growth for the cluster. Further more, a mutual knowledge base enables companies within the cluster to constantly combine and re-combine related and non-related resources to produce new knowledge and innovations. This enhances economic specialization within the cluster and results in development of localized capabilities. Further an industrial cluster creates an at-mosphere that is only limited to companies within the cluster. Many areas have developed this atmosphere and recently this is also labeled buzz, where buzz refers to the information exchange in the society, formed by face-to-face contacts and the localization of people and firms in similar industry or region. Further this buzz involves specific information and up-dates of information which has its source from both unexpected and expected meetings where this information leads to shared cultural traditions, new technologies and habits within a particular field. Participants in this atmosphere or now called buzz are not search-ing for this kind of information or rumors, but are naturally surrounded by it automatically. Further the nature of buzz is natural and spontaneous, in other words it is a thing that just happens. For instance buzz is about communicating but saying hello to another actor in the

21

cluster is not the intended way of performing buzz, but to have negotiations, phone calls, or business meetings.

A cluster will benefit from buzz, but that it needs something else to really achieve great-ness. According to Bathelt, et al., (2004) establishing international partnership is a solution, author refers to this as global pipelines. Fully functional pipelines does not come free of charge, it’s an expensive investment and requires understanding of different cultures in or-der to communicate with each other on the same level. To successfully establish a global pipeline a development of joint problem solving, learning and knowledge creating is need-ed. Also trust is important in order for this partnership to communicate and share vital in-formation. Once trust is established this new pipeline will pump in new information to the cluster which then enhances the local buzz within the cluster. Meaning the spillover will be open for the firms neighboring companies i.e. the horizontal companies. The spillover that occurs due to companies having global pipelines encourages companies to learn more from well-connected companies rather than being more inward looking and isolated in their ori-entation.

Except from local buzz created from actors in the cluster intervening with each other and global pipelines pumping information to the cluster, governmental institutions can enhance the buzz. According to Enright (1998) in some regions the government have made invest-ments to provide business services ranging from basic research, market research, material testing and business process consulting. The idea is to provide experience to small and me-dium sized firms that cannot perform nor has the money to learn this by themselves. One way of doing this is to use governmental institutions such as universities, where the univer-sities provide research, development and transferring new technologies to these companies. By having these institutions as a supportive role in a cluster the spillover will be generated to neighboring companies, hence enhancing the buzz in the cluster.

Figure 3-1, Cluster model, (based on Bathelt, et al., 2004)

Another commonly used model is the Diamond model introduced by Porter in his book The Competitive Advantage of Nations (Porter, 1990) where he “…model[s] the effect of loca-

22

tion on competition through four interrelated influences graphically depicted in a dia-mond…”

Figure 3-2, Porter’s Diamond Model (Porter, 2000b, p20)

As can be seen in figure 3-2 above, the model consists of four different elements, the top elementdescribes firms’ structures and oganizations and also concerning rules, intensity and incentives on competition and rivalry in the region. The rightmost element regards what kind of demand there is in the region and current as well as future growth in the region. The bottom element describes local suppliers and other supporting businesses that are esstential for the cluster’s function. The last element, on the left, is describing what kind of resources there are available for the companies in the clusters. Examples of resources that one should analyze are natural resources, human resources, infrastructure, etc. (Porter, 2000b).

3.4 Networks

According to Anderson, Håkansson, and Johansson (1994) a business network is two or more firms that collectively exchanges information in a business relationship. This network can also be directly or indirectly connected to other business relationships and form a larg-er business network.

The network consists of primary and secondary functions where primary functions repre-sent the direct positive and negative effects due to a dyadic relationship between the two firms and secondary functions consists of effects due to connections to other relationships in a larger network. The importance of primary versus secondary functions varies, in some

23

relationships the primary functions are the most important while in other relationships the secondary effects matters most. However, according to Blankenburg Holm, Eriksson, & Johansson (1999), relationships with only primary functions do not exist.

When reviewing relationship between suppliers, one can find that the buying and selling part is seldom the major importance, information regarding logistics, production, etc. are often of the same or greater importance for the firms involved (Holm Blankenburg, et al., 1999)

Rosenfeld (1997) argues that networks are not the same as clusters and compared to Blankenburg Holm, et al., (1999) and Anderson et al., (1994), his definition is more focused on the primary functions of relationships. He further states that networks are more busi-ness-like relationships while clusters involve more subjective aspects such as sharing the same visions and is based on trust and other social values. Rosenfeld (1997) compares net-works and clusters according to the table below.

Table 3-1, comparison table (Rosenfeld, 1997)

Networks Clusters

Networks allow firms access to specialized services at lower cost

Clusters attract needed specialized services to a region

Networks have restricted membership Clusters have open 'membership'

Networks are based on contractual agreements

Clusters are based on social values that fos-ter trust and encourage reciprocity

Networks make it easier for firms to engage in complex business

Clusters generate demand for more firms with similar and related capabilities

Networks are based on cooperation Clusters take both cooperation and competition

Networks have common business goals Clusters have collective visions

Blankenburg Holm, et al, (1999) conclude that business relationship take a long time to de-velop but has a positive effect on value creation and mutual dependence.

24

4 Results Here the authors present the results from interviews and questionnaires.

4.1 Interviews and questionnaires

Before presenting the results from the interviews and questionnaires, the authors decided on presenting the process of how they received the results. The receptions of answers from the interviews and questionnaires can be divided into three parts. Where the first part is named part A, part B and finally part C.

In Part A the authors received a contact list of 12 companies out of 41 from the project Logkomp. The authors e-mailed these 12 companies and received seven replies, were four of these seven replies ended up with an interview at these companies, two companies an-swered the questions on e-mail and one replied that they did not have the time needed in the near future, the remaining five companies did not reply at all. At this point the authors wanted more answers from different companies and made a second attempt to achieve more companies, this second attempt is called Part B. In Part B the authors made contact with the project leader of Logkomp and received the contact list of all companies from the project. The authors selected 26 of the remaining companies that they had not sent e-mail to. This ended up with six replies, of which five replied positively and all of these five re-sulted in answers on the questionnaires via e-mail. The last respondent only replied that they as well did not have any time, the remaining 20 companies did not answer at all. The last part which is called Part C, the authors decided to contact even more companies through the network Logpoint. Here the authors received five answers out of 27 compa-nies that the authors e-mailed. Out of these five replies two companies agreed on conduct-ing an interview, two companies answered the questionnaires via e-mail and one company replied that they did not have sufficient amount of time in order to do either an interview or answer the questions via e-mail. The remaining 22 companies did not respond at all.

In total the authors sent 65 e-mails, which resulted in 20 replies, of these 20 replies six in-terviews was made, eleven answers via e-mail on the questionnaires and three replied that did not have the time. A total of 47 companies did not reply to the authors at all, for a quick overview of these numbers see table 4-1 below.

Table 4-1, Frequency of replies

Frequency  Action 65  Number of companies that was e‐mailed          

18  Answers                   

6  Answers that ended up with an interview          

11  Answers that ended up with results on questionnaires through e‐mail 

3  Negative replies                

47  No reply at all                

To present the results from the short questions, the authors decided to divide the results in three parts. In the first part the authors split the companies into three categories, based on their size namely large, medium sized and small. The definition of these three categories are based on turnover, where small companies are between 0 to 100 MSEK, medium compa-nies above 100 MSEK but below 500 MSEK and large companies above 500 MSEK. The answers in the first graph, from the rating questions have been added together for every question, hence giving the average result per question. This had to be done since some

25

companies did not answer all questions based on that they had insufficient knowledge about these certain questions. As can be read in Appendix C there are 17 short questions which in the graph forms the outer circle and the grades one to ten are displayed horizon-tally. After each statement for each of the figures, a number will be written in brackets, this number corresponds to the question number. The results from the shorts can be found in Appendix D.

The following diagrams are divided in size, and displayed in following order; large, medium and small. As a comparison the first graph displays all answers from all the companies, while the diagram over the large companies displays the answers from the four large com-panies. The diagram over medium sized companies shows the seven medium sized compa-nies’ answers and four companies’ answers for the small companies graph.

In figure 4-1 to the left, the weighted aver-age for all answers from all the companies interviewed can be seen. Overall the loca-tion is regarded as very good, both from a municipality point of view (1) as well as from a regional point of view (2). The im-portance of the location is also high (3). Most companies do not feel dependent on other companies in the municipality (13) or the region (14) and there is little non busi-ness related information traded (15).

Looking at the companies with a yearly turn-over of more than 500 million SEK in figure 4-2, it is apparent the larger compa-nies have less non-business contact with other companies(15), they are less depend-ent on local companies(13,14) and have lit-tle contact with foreign companies(16). Further on, the larger companies tend to argue that the municipalities are not that good at cooperating with companies in the region (6).

Figure 4-1, All companies

0

2

4

6

8

101

2

3

4

5

6

7

89

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

All Companies

0

2

4

6

8

101

2

3

4

5

6

7

8910

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

Large Companies

Figure 4-2, Large companies

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For the medium sized companies, 100-500 Million SEK in yearly turn-over, in figure 4-3, the companies feel that the municipali-ties and the region could become better at cooperating on all levels (5,6,7). They have slightly more non-business contacts than larger companies (15) but are equally inde-pendent from other companies in JNV (13,14). The amount of contact with for-eign companies is also limited (16).

The smaller companies, less than 100 mil-lion SEK, figure 4-4, are less impressed by the municipalities locations (1) but believes strongly in cooperation with the local gov-ernments (4) but in general, the coopera-tion is poor (5,6) Smaller companies tend to have little non-business like contact (15) and believes that they do not share the same vision with other companies in the region about regional development (10). Further they feel that they do not need more contact with the higher education in-stances in the region(8).

In the second part of displaying the results, the companies are divided based on where they are located. Meaning they are divided into three categories based on which municipality they belong too. In this case the three municipalities are Jönköping, Nässjö and Vaggeryd. The diagrams will also be displayed in that order.

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Figure 4-3, Medium sized companies

Figure 4-4, Small companies

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In Jönköping, figure 4-5, the companies are satisfied with the geographical loca-tion (1), the municipality is average in cooperation with the companies (5) but good at cooperating with other instances (8). Little informal contact is conducted (15) and the companies are neither de-pendent on local companies (13) nor for-eign companies (17).

In Nässjö, figure 4-6, the companies be-lieves that the regional location is slightly better than the municipal location (1,2). Cooperation between the municipality and the companies is regarded as less im-portant (4). There is very little communi-cation that do not regard business (15) and there are doubts about if the visions about development are shared, however the shared municipal visions (9,11) are better than the regional visions (10,12). Foreign contacts are also few(16).

Vaggeryd’s companies, figure 4-6, be-lieve that cooperation between the mu-nicipalities is important (4) but there are some improvements needed in the coop-eration on all levels (5,6,7). There is on average little contact with foreign com-panies(16).

Figur 4-5, Jönköping Municipality

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Figure 4-5 Jönköping Municipality

Figure 4-6, Nässjö Municipality

Figure 4-7, Vaggeryd Municipality

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The third category, the companies are divided according to industry, and the companies are split into two groups; manufacturing and logistics.

Manufacturing companies lack support from the municipalities(4,5,6) and feel lit-tle dependent on other local companies (12,13). The geographical location is somewhat important(15) and there is lit-tle contact with foreign companies)

The logistics companies are very satisfied with the geographical location(1,2) and believe stronger in cooperation with the municipalities(3). They feel that other companies have the same developing vi-sions(8,9) but not cooperation visions (10,11). Logistics companies are not de-pendent on other companies(12,13) and have very little foreign contacts(16).

4.2 Deeper questions

Below are summaries of the answers for the deeper questions. The answers can be found in full length in Appendix E.

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Figure 4-8, Manufacturing companies

Figure 4-9, Logistics companies

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1. How great is the importance of the logistics industry for the municipality? Jönköping All companies in Jönköping, regardless of industry, can see the importance of logis-tics in Jönköping municipality and some even consider the logistics industry as vital for the on-going development of the society. The geographical location of Jönkö-ping is one of the factors that make logistics important for Jönköping, not utilizing this asset would be considered a waste of opportunity. Nässjö Most of the Nässjö-based companies rates logistics as a first class industry in the municipality and this is mostly due to its location along the southern main line and close proximity to Jönköping. However, one company sticks out at claims that Nässjö municipality is too focused on logistics and might forget other factors that are important for companies. Vaggeryd The logistics industry in Vaggeryd is crucial for a small municipality like Vaggeryd according to the companies and they believe that it is very important that the cur-rent developments continue and that the municipality and region continue to back the logistics industry with more infrastructure expansions, improved railroads are especially asked for.

2. Describe the municipality from a logistics point of view Jönköping All companies agree that Jönköping has one of the best geographical locations in Sweden and sometimes even in Scandinavia. The proximity to other centers of population in the Nordic region means that placing a distribution terminal in Jön-köping is often very favorable. The infrastructure is considered to be good, howev-er improvements are always needed and there is ample of supply of both skilled and unskilled workers for the industry. Nässjö Nässjö is also considered to be in an excellent location, however Jönköping is in a better spot. Much of the positive thoughts about Nässjö come from its good rail-road connections as well as the easy access to the major centers of population in Sweden. There are however doubts that infrastructure alone will not help Nässjö to develop, commuting from other cities needs to be improved. Vaggeryd The companies in Vaggeryd are very satisfied with their location along the Euro highway 4 and there is a positive atmosphere in Vaggeryd that strives to develop the community even more.

3. What weaknesses can you identify within the cooperation between the mu-nicipality and the companies and what can the municipality do to improve the situations for companies? Jönköping The Logpoint cooperation is considered to be a positive asset for the municipality, however the municipality does not always have the same priorities as the companies and they are slow to react to changes in the business world. The infrastructure

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needs some development, especially national high way 40 and the railroads with a larger container terminal. The municipality could also consider subsidizing certain businesses and simplify the bureaucracy and make it more beneficial to hire youths. Airline connections with larger cities also need to be improved in order to success-fully do business with foreign partners. Nässjö In Nässjö, the opinions are more spread out, some companies believes that the municipality is to focuses on attracting new companies and does not focus enough on the existing ones, while others wants the municipality to be more helpful in at-tracting new companies and also to understand more about the needs of SMEs. The municipality also needs to invest in education and attracting know-how. Vaggeryd The cooperation between companies and the municipality is considered to be ra-ther good in Vaggeryd, however the municipality might use too simple methods sometimes, for instance creating a webpage to promote the municipality instead of searching for potential new establishments themselves. As with Nässjö, which is another small municipality, it can sometimes be difficult to find skilled workers and the municipality needs to work with this question.

4. How can the cooperation between the municipalities in the region be im-proved? Jönköping Most of the companies can identify a paradox in the question regarding the munic-ipality versus the region. The overall belief is that the municipalities need to be more unified and in the larger questions, focus more on what is good for the entire region since the benefits can spillover to the other municipalities as well. Coopera-tion like the LogPoint is a good way to start, also have a unified marketing strategy and assist small companies to exhibit at trade fairs in a JNV-booth. One company believes that the municipalities don’t really want to cooperate any more than they already do. Nässjö Companies in Nässjö calls for improved contact areas between companies and re-gional politicians, possibly with the aid of Destination Jönköping, Nässjö trade council and Vaggeryd trade council and together make long-standing plans for the future and everyone needs to stick to this plan. Vaggeryd Vaggeryd’s companies also believes that the municipalities need a more holistic view and stop competing about prestige and put effort in to developing the region rather than having a protectionistic point of view. More cooperation regarding edu-cation in, high schools universities and vocational education is also called for. They want the region to become more like the Gislaved, Gnosjö, Vaggeryd and Värnamo (GGVV)-municipalities and create a strong brand, similar to them.

5. What is your view on cooperation in the future, between the municipalities as well as between companies and the municipality?

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The companies in the region all agree that further cooperation is vital for the fu-ture, especially since the region is rather small and that Sweden in general is a small country that needs to focus its advantages to achieve success. Many of the compa-nies stress that local suppliers and customers are favorable since this makes the communication easier and faster. Through cooperation, infrastructural develop-ments can be made as well as development within educational sectors. Through more business networks in the future, more contacts can be made and these can generate more informal connections between the companies. Overall the future looks bright in the region.

6. Do you know the concept of cluster? 7 companies did know what a cluster was and 3 companies believed they knew what is.

7. Would you say that there is a cluster or an agglomeration in the municipality today? Jönköping Drawing a definitive line between a cluster and an agglomeration is hard and the companies in Jönköping also troubled with this. One company argued that Jönkö-ping indeed were a cluster, another specified Torsvik as a logistics cluster but not the rest of the municipality. The rest of the companies did not have a real opinion or said that it was more an agglomeration than a cluster in Jönköping. Nässjö The Nässjö-based companies were also indecisive, however the general belief is that Nässjö is working towards a cluster but is not there yet. One company pointed out that the small size of the municipality helped the cluster development. Vaggeryd In Vaggeryd, there are two companies that argue that there exists a cluster within the municipality and two that argues that there is merely an agglomeration. As one of the latter ones say “Companies have their own solutions but do not share each other’s solutions”

8. Would you say that there is a cluster or an agglomeration in the region to-day? 5 companies argue that the JNV-region is working as a cluster today and 10 com-panies believe that it is more towards an agglomeration than a cluster in general. Some companies however argue that there might be clusters with in industries, such as within IT. More like an agglomeration than a cluster.

9. Would you say that the municipality is working for or against you?

Jönköping The companies in Jönköping seem pleased by the municipality and no one argues that the municipality is working against them. One company however argues that they don’t have felt any contribution from the municipality, except within environ-mental issues.

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Nässjö Nässjö’s companies are also satisfied, one company feels that the cooperation needs improvement and another feels that they have no contribution from the municipali-ty. Vaggeryd All companies in Vaggeryd are happy with the cooperation, one talks about that they feel that the municipality needs them more than the company needs the mu-nicipality.

10. Would you say that the region is working for or against you?

Only 5 companies could say that the region works for them. A few companies be-lieve that the region does not contribute anything to their companies or that the re-gion works in certain industries but not all. One company argues that the munici-palities only look after their own interests and not the shared interests in the region, another company argues that the region has worked against them in several ques-tions, sometimes severely.

4.3 Politicians’ views on the region

Below are the gradings from the politicans that responded to the questionaries sent out. These are compared to the answers from companies in the respective municipality.

The deeper questions answered by the politicians can be found in Appendix F.

Figure 4-10, Comparison Jönköping

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Figure 4-11, Comparison Nässjö

Figure 4-12, Comparison Vaggeryd

4.4 The central railway terminal

The following section is based on articles from the newspaper, Jönköpings Posten.

Thanks to its connection to the southern mainline, Nässjö has had an operating container terminal (dry port) since 2004 and in the beginning of 2010 the Båramo terminal in Vaggeryd was opened (Nilsson, 2010). At the same time, a new railway track was laid south of Jönköping, enabling trains to transport goods to the Torsvik area, south of Jönköping. The construction of the additional track needed was completed in late 2010 and the termi-nal in Jönköping was opened. The new terminal in Jönköping is only meant to be a provi-sional terminal until funds to construct a larger terminal can be found (Holst, 2010).

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During 2011 the Swedish Transport Administration started an inquiry to choose a ‘central terminal’ in the Jönköping region. Being a central terminal means that the central govern-ment will take more responsibility and bear more costs needed for infrastructural develop-ment (Lindström, 2011). Currently the Nässjö terminal is considered as the ‘central termi-nal’ among with 10 others in Sweden (Pilkvist, 2012a).

This came to be a true test of the willingness to cooperate between the three municipalities. When a report from the consultant agency WSP leaked out in September 2011 and favored Vaggeryd first, Nässjö second and Jönköping last, the leading politicians in Jönköping wrote a memo to the Swedish Transport Administration stating why Jönköping was the correct choice of location (Lindström, 2011). The deputy mayor in Jönköping, Mats Green, and Vaggeryd’s deputy mayor, Berry Lilja, had earlier that year written a debate article about the importance of the Torsvik area and its development. This debate article was used as an attachment to the memo that was sent to the Transport Administration and when Mr. Lilja found about this, he was outraged and the willingness to cooperate seemed to have shrunken (Thor, 2011).

In December 2011, it was revealed that there were extensive talks off the records between several instances and especially noticeable was that there might have been statements from the Regional development council that were not deeply rooted in the whole council, favor-ing Jönköping as the new central terminal. This caused politicians in Vaggeryd and Nässjö to join together and write a memo to the Transport Administration explaining that the Re-gional development council had not yet taken any decisions, questioned why there were in-formal talks between Jönköping and the Transport Administration and finally objected to that the consultancy report was neglected (Persson, 2011).

During the beginning of 2012 the Transport Administration had reached the conclusion that Jönköping was the best location in the region for the new central terminal. However, they still noted that the provisional terminal that exists today is too small and needs in-vestments from local governments. At the same time Martin Andree, the municipality chief executive of Jönköping, argued that the current provisional terminal at Torsvik had already reached its maximum capacity and he saw a need to invest circa 100 million SEK in a new larger terminal. Another argument for this was that the municipality wanted to remove the existing marshaling yard in the more central district of Ljungarum. However, the managing director of the company that runs the terminal at Torsvik claims that its utilization is less than 50% but he still sees increased possibilities with a larger terminal (Pilkvist, 2012a).

When the Regional council met in the end of March 2012, they had finally agreed on a so-lution that everyone could back. The new solution was that Nässjö and Vaggeryd would be considered as central terminals today and Jönköping would become the central terminal in the future. There seems to be some disagreement between the municipalities regarding the timespan, Mr. Lilja of Vaggeryd believes that it might take 15 years until Jönköping can in-vest in a larger terminal, thus becoming the central terminal. Ann-Mari Nilsson deputy mayor of Jönköping argues that 5 years is a more reasonable timespan (Pilkvist, 2012b).

The situation might become more aggravated in the future since the municipality of Vär-namo, 40 kilometers south of Vaggeryd are also planning to construct a dry dock. This means that the market for container terminals might be oversaturated and none of the ter-minals will be able to succeed (Sandberg, 2011).

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5 Discussions In this chapter the results from the previous chapter are discussed with supportive argu-ments from the theory chapter. In order to compare with the criterias for a cluste, the dis-cussion is divided into four parts, size-, city-, industry- and region-based. The criterias are from the model in figure 3-1, the authors are especifically looking at: shared values, buzz, global pipelines and governmental institutions. In order for the authors to get the whole picture they also take the remaining questions from the interviews into consideration since they also affect the answers on the research questions.

In total the authors contacted and e-mailed 65 companies were 47 of them did not re-spond. Because of this, one can then ask, how much interest there is in cooperation. In the theory chapter Enright (1998) mentions how important contacts through governmental in-stitutions are for clusters, such as universities. A signal is sent when the majority of the companies do not reply, which could mean that they do not have much contact with in-stances as university from the beginning do not care or do not have time. Those who did reply, scored low points on the question: How much would you gain from a better contact with local universities, such as Jönköping University? Some motivated the low grade by say-ing that they already had sufficient contact with universities and some that they did not wish to have more contact. The authors also contacted each deputy mayor of the three municipalities. The time it took for these elected politicians who often passionately speaks out on the importance of cooperation and that the region is a cluster, was very lengthy and it took on average 6 weeks for the politicians to reply, compared to 4 days on average for the companies.

The authors would like to stress the question whether cluster is an old trend and way of thinking or if it can be fully applicable even today? Today many companies have or are in progress of outsourcing or offshoring business functions of their company to cut costs. The level of outsourcing and offshoring during the 1990s was not as high as today, Porter’s model of cluster from the 1990s might be more accurate at that time, but today the authors believe that this model might be more of an old thinking and it does not always comply with the real world. Cluster would be easier to form at that time when companies had all their business functions in the same country. A manufacturing company that outsources or offshoring its manufacturing to a country such as China will cut connections with their lo-cal suppliers. These connections then disappear and with that the informal information and buzz also disappear. The smaller supplier will have to rely on another company. However, clusters in such industries as logistics, IT, etc. are less prone to changes due to changes in production locations.

5.1 Companies based on size

5.1.1 Large companies

According to J. M. Shaver and F. Flyer (2000) companies with good characteristics such as; good human capital, technology, training programs and suppliers or distributors tends to isolate themselves. In this case those companies, who have done this, are the lagre compa-nies, i.e large logistics companies. These companies have their own resources do deal with issues that a cluster normally could handle. This could be a reason why these large compa-nies tend to isolate themselves and do not need companies within their municipality or re-gion as much as the smaller companies do.

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Global pipelines

Large companies answered around 5.8 on question (16) and around 6 on question (17), this means that about 58 percent of the information they have are with foreign companies. They also think that the importance of this information is a 6 out of a scale of 10. Bathelt, et al,.(2004) mentions what this information can do when ‘pumped’ into a cluster, namely that it enhances the buzz, creating shared values and culture traditions, i.e. spillovers.

Shared values

Bathelt, et al., (2004) discuss buzz, how this could lead to expected or unexpected meet-ings, and that this could lead to shared cultural traditions, technologies and habits within a particular field. These shared values could enhance and make the cluster flourish. In the re-sults chapter, large companies think that their neighboring companies have the same shared values to develop both the municipality and the region to an extent of around 6.5 out of 10.

When researching about shared beliefs of neighboring companies’ willingness to cooperate with another the average score for companies both within the municipality and in the re-gion, the score decreases to about 4.5. This states that these large companies has a good understanding for each other when regarding shared values for developing both the munic-ipality and the region. When talking about shared values regarding cooperation the score was a bit lower which shows that it is below average and that large companies are not that prone to cooperate. What one can say is then that large companies to some extent have the same shared values but it might not be high enough to meet the expectations of cluster companies.

Buzz

Large companies tend to have few informal connections and do not depend on other com-panies neither in the municipality nor in the region, this could imply that they do not need to be part of a cluster. The interviews state that the large companies have a better arsenal of resources when it comes to money, purchasing power, technlogy and competence. Accord-ing to Bathelt, et al., (2004), a company within a cluster needs informal connection and in-formation to be part of this cluster. Large companies do not always need this external in-formal information or connection since this demand is met internaly through the business group. With this information authors came up with a definition that they would like to call ‘Decentralized Logistics Cluster’ (DLC). DLC can be described as a normal cluster but has no geographical closness demand to other similar companies, but has the same side effects as a normal cluster. This is though not a general definition for all types of large companies, but for large logistics companies. Their informal connections and information come from their own business group, hence their buzz is created within the business group and then transmitted out to these decentralized outposts worldwide. One can say that the business group act like a router and consolidating all buzz and information and then transmit to its nodes. One can say that these DCL’s tends to conform to a certain extent with Markusens’ (1996) hub-and-spoke as well as satellite district.

Another reason for large companies to isolate themselves might be that since they have these good characteristics as Bathelt, et al., (2004) describes, they might feel that they share too much vital information about how they conduct their business and since they are better at these things, they will not gain anything from sharing with other less good companies. Of course this could be the opposite for the companies with less good characteristics, since

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they will gain a lot by sharing information with a ‘better’ company, which could explain why these kinds of companies are more dependent on other companies.

Governmental institutions

Regarding question 8, how much the large companies would gain from intensified contact with the universities. They answered around 4.8 which is low. This plays a big part in a normal cluster according to Enright (1998). A reason for why they do not have a higher score on this particular question might be as mentioned before, that large companies have their own resources within the business group, and therefore do not need more contact than necessary.

5.1.2 Middle sized companies

Global pipelines

On both question 16 and 17 the middle sized companies scored 5 out of 10, meaning around 50 percent of their information arrives from foreign companies and that the im-portance of this information is quite important for them aswell. As previous mentioned Bathelt, et al., (2004) explaines in the theory how this information is needed for a cluster to fully function.

Shared values

Medium sized companies’ beliefs are that their neighbouring companies have the same val-ues when it comes to developing the municipality and the region, the middle sized compa-nies answered around 6 on the questions 9 to 12. Yet again Bathelt, et al., (2004) mention in the theory chapter how important shared values and visions are. The feeling from the medim sized companies is that they in scored average on all questions. There were no high or low scores on any question, this could mean that they are in general rather satisfied with their present situation.

Buzz

Middle sized companies have the largest amount of connections, since they score 5.8 on question 15, and Bathelt, et al.,(2004) describe in the theory chapter the impact of informal contacts to other companies and how this could affect a cluster. They are a little more de-pendent of other companies, both in the municipality and the region. This could depend on middle sized companies had the time and possibility to acquire a larger network of con-tacts. Another view is that middle sized companies in this case are often originally estab-lished within their municipalities, meaning they have not moved to the location recently as the large companies often have. This explaines why large companies thinks that the geo-graphical spot is much more important than what the middle sized companies think.

Obviously middle sized companies think that an exchange of information and cooperation between companies is good since they are more dependent on other companies. This could be due to the fact that they do not have what Shaver and Flyer (2000) describe as good characteristics. One can argue that at least they do not have enough good characteristics to be able to solve is core functions without the need for other companies. This could be a reason why they are more dependent on other companies in its municipality and region.

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Governmental institutions

As one can see in question 8, where the answer for these companies is around 6. Compared with small companies who scored a lower point, this could depend on that the medium sized companies are more compatible to the university than the small companies are. Uni-versities such as Jönköping university has, despite its focus on SMEs, more programs that is oriented towards higher education, and medium sized companies could therefore gain more from a better contact with universities.

5.1.3 Small companies

Small companies are more dependent on companies in their own municipality and their re-gion than what middle sized and large companies are. Why they answer like this could be for the same reason as for the middle sized companies which J. M. Shaver and F. Flyer (2000) described when speaking about good characteristics. In many cases of these small companies they do not have their own training programs, good human capital or technolo-gy as larger companies tend to have. This could explain why they feel most dependent of these three categories of companies based on size.

Global pipelines

Small companies do not have the same amout of information coming from abroad as me-dium sized or large companies, this could also depend on that they can not handle or do not need that much information from abroad since they are small. But the information they get is though important to them. Bathelt, et al,. (2004) describes the importance of global piplines, how they ‘pump’ information into the cluster. In this case small companies do not have the same amount of information ‘pumped’ from overseas but there is information transmitted even if medium sized and large companies have more information transfered through these pipelines.

Shared values

Regarding if the small companies have the same shared values, questions 9 to 12, they scored around 7 on developing the municipality and around 6 in the case of developing the region. For question 11 and 12 they scored around 6 respectivily 5. This means that they believe to a higher extent that companies in the municipality want to cooperate than com-panies in the region (Bathelt, et al., 2004). further states that sharing values is important for a cluster to fully function, in other words that they are on the same track. Why the compa-nies answerd a higher score on their municipality could depend on that the companies have more knowledge and contacts within their municipality than in the region JNV.

Buzz

On question 8, regarding how much informal contact small companies has with other companies they answered quite low, below 5. Meaning that they do not have plenty of in-formal contact with other companies, and that the contact that do exist, mostly consists of business related information. This informal information is a big part of a cluster according to (Bathelt, et al., 2004), this informal information created buzz which in turn creates ex-pected as well as unexcpected meetings, thus the spillover will be shared by others.

Governmental institutions

Small companies have fewer connections with universities such as Jönköping University. This could depend on that Jönköping University offers more education based on larger

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companies which do not really suit small companies. Another thing that also could be a factor is that small companies can “control” their business easier, meaning they have a bet-ter hawk-eye perspective over its business since its small. This could imply that they do not always have the same needs for competence or knowledge as a medium sized or large companies have. Small companies can ‘handle’ themselves. Enright (1998) speaks about how a great contact with universities could lead to shared competence, knowledge and ide-as.

5.2 Municipality based

5.2.1 Jönköping

The companies from Jönköping are not as dependent on other companies within the mu-nicipality or the region as companies within the other municipalities are. This could depend on that they have their suppliers and customers somewhere else, this gives an indication that they do not need to be a part of a cluster. Another reason for this could be that most of the companies from Jönköping are large companies and has been said in the discussion part of large companies, they do not need to have much contact with other companies since they have such huge resources within the business group to handle this demand. The companies in Jönköping do believe that their neighboring companies have the same values about developing the municipality and region. The companies tend not to have any will to develop business operations, but rather want to develop the infrastructure. The reason for this could be that most of the companies in Jönköping are logistics companies, and to de-velop the infrastructure is more important to them since transport and distribution is their core business, compare to manufacturing companies.

Global pipelines

Jönköping companies scored around 6 on the question 16 that regards how much contact is conducted with foreign companies, meaning that almost 60% of their informal infor-mation exchanges are coming from abroad. The importance of this is also discussed in the theory by Bathelt, et al., (2004) were they state the importance for a cluster of having these global pipelines through this informal information flows or as they describe it as ‘pumped’ into the cluster creating and enhancing the buzz. The authors also asked the companies of the importance of this informal information, question 17, and the average score for com-panies in Jönköping is around 5. One can then say that this information is to some extent important for the companies but not vital for their existence. An interesting view is that the companies in Jönköping generally wants a better infrastructure, however one particularly company mentions another reason for a better infrastructure than just moving goods from point A to point B. For this company a better infrastructure would ease and reduce the time of travel both nationally and internationally. They believed that their meetings face-to-face would improve if this was to happen. If their communication with companies abroad would improve, hence generate more ‘pump’, more significant and perhaps more accurate information would reach the company and the potential cluster.

Shared values

Another vital part in a cluster is that the companies have the same shared values, in the questions 9 to 12 the respondents are answering if that is the case or not. Question 9 states that the average score is around 7, this means that the companies believes that they and their neighboring companies have almost the same shared beliefs regarding of the willing-ness to develop their municipality. For the region they scored an average of 7, which is sim-

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ilar to the Jönköping companies’ answers, thus in general the companies from Jönköping believe that both companies in their own municipality and region wants to develop both the municipality and the region. Question 10 and 11 are almost the same but the difference is that it’s not about developing but about cooperation. In general the companies in Jönkö-ping finds this score a bit lower 6 for the municipality and around 5 for the region. They are still above average but obviously the priority is not to cooperate with companies either in the municipality or in the region even if they want to develop it. An interesting view is that the companies in Jönköping think or believe that the three municipalities need to unify themselves when discussing large questions that affect the whole region. This can show that within the region, the municipalities do not have the same shared values regarding larger questions for the region.

Buzz

As mentioned before in the discussion Bathelt, et al., (2004) mentions the importance of local informal information and connections, that it is a vital part of a cluster. Question 15 takes this into consideration, where the authors ask if there is any local informal infor-mation exchange between companies and since the average score is around 5, meaning that about 50 percent of all information with other companies can be regarded as informal in-formation.

Governmental institutions

Another important part in a cluster is according to Enright (1998) how much contact a company has with governmental institutions. On question eight the companies in Jönkö-ping scored around five out of ten, meaning that they won’t gain much more if the contact with governmental institutions would increase. Through the interviews some companies gave an explanation of why they score low on this question, and it was due to two things; either they already had sufficient amount of contact, or that they thought that they did not need any more contact with the university. On the other hand the companies in Jönköping believe that the municipalities need to be more unified and in the larger questions, focus more on what is good for the entire region since the benefits can spillover to the other municipalities as well. Cooperation like the Logpoint is a good way to start, as well as hav-ing a unified marketing strategy and assist small companies to exhibit at trade fairs in a JNV-booth. This shows that besides universities, the municipalities plays an important role in the companies need of more information spillover and strategically market themselves. But so far the companies in Jönköping are satisfied by how the municipalities conduct their work. In general companies and the municipality have answered almost identical on those questions which are mentioned in figure 4-10. The visible differences are that Jönköping municipality thinks that their cooperation with companies is a little bit better than what the companies believes. On the other hand the companies believe that they have better coop-eration with companies in the region, than what Jönköping municipality thinks.

5.2.2 Nässjö

Based on their answers, one can draw the conclusion that the companies in Nässjö feel that the region is more important than their own municipality. The region’s location is better than the municipality’s and this could possibly be due to the inaccessibility to Euro way 4 and even though Nässjö has excellent railroad connections, this mode of transport is not always suitable for all companies. Further on, the companies feel that they are more de-pendent on regional companies than municipal companies. This can also be due to the

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grouping of companies along the Euro way 4 but also the lack of supporting businesses in Nässjö. The companies in Nässjö are the ones with most contact with foreign companies but feel that there are few shared visions regarding the development of the municipality. These facts may imply that perhaps the companies are not entirely satisfied with the overall situation in Nässjö.

Global pipelines

On the questions 16 and 17 which regard up how much information they have abroad and how important this information is to the companies, the companies in Nässjö scored around 5 on question 16 and around 6 on question 17 which is lower than the companies in Jönköping, but still above average. These questions are regarding the global pipelines as Bathelt, et al., (2004) talk about. These global pipelines pump information into the cluster and creating buzz which according to them is a vital part of a cluster.

Shared values

Another vital part of a cluster is that the companies have to some extent the same shared values and visions. Bathelt, et al., (2004) discuss the importance of shared values, but also the problematic with sharing values and information. Large companies, who have good characteristics which are previously described, might feel that they might lose more on sharing values and information with companies that are not equally good as they are. The questions 9 – 12 asks whether the companies in Nässjö feel that they and their neighboring companies have the same values and visions regarding developing the municipality and the region and also if they have the same values and visions regarding cooperating with other companies within the municipality and the region. The companies scored 6 regarding to what extent they all believe that the companies in Nässjö have the same values regarding developing the municipality. Regarding the region, the companies in Nässjö scored 4.5, which are rather low, meaning they only partially think that other companies have the same shared values regarding developing the municipality.

Buzz

The companies in Nässjö gave question 15 around 4 points out of 10, meaning that around 40 percent of the information transmitted between companies is informal information and is the lowest score out of the three municipalities. According to Bathelt, et al., (2004) buzz is about communicating with other actors within the cluster, for instance having negotia-tions, phone calls or business meetings. By having this informal information flowing through companies within the municipality buzz could be generated.

Governmental institutions

Regarding how many the companies in Nässjö would gain if they had more contacts with educational instances, they answered around 4 which could mean that they do not need or do not want any more contact with educational instances. Enright (1998) writes about oth-er inputs to clusters than global pipelines. He talks about closeness to universities where vi-tal information can be traded through and the fact that the companies and a cluster can gain from this information. On the other hand a perception that the companies from Näss-jö have is that they request more contact between companies and regional politicians, ra-ther than more contact with universities. The bottom line is though that the companies in Nässjö are satisfied with the municipality’s current efforts. An interesting view is though, that Nässjö Municipality thinks that they have a better cooperation with the companies than what the companies believe that the municipality has with the companies. The munic-

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ipality thinks the cooperation is worth 10 points out of 10 while the companies only gave around 6 points. Another pitch from Nässjö municipality’s is that they scored 8 on the question regarding how good the cooperation is between the municipality and other gov-ernmental institutions, while the companies finds the cooperation around 6. Generally Nässjö municipality has a higher score than what the companies have.

5.2.3 Vaggeryd

The companies in Vaggeryd are very satisfied with their geographical location and believe that the region’s location is very good as well. Also Vaggeryds municipality is highly satis-fied with the municipality’s geographical location. Among the three municipalities, the Vaggeryd-based companies rank the importance of location as the highest. Many of the companies interviewed in Vaggeryd are small or medium sized and often specialized in their operations, this makes it challenging to find highly educated personnel and also to adapt new production methods and they believe that increased contact with higher educa-tion, for example Jönköping University, can help them to gain further knowledge. In gen-eral, companies are a little more dependent on companies in the region than in the munici-pality. This could for example be the need for support businesses like IT, lawyers, etc.

Global pipelines

The companies in vaggeryd ranked both question 16 and 17 relatively high, 5 and 7 which implies that much of the information that passes through these companies comes from abroad. Bathelt, et al,. (2004) discuss the importance for these global pipelines that ‘pump’ information into the cluster. The companies in Vaggeryd have access to this information, and for a cluster, equally important, other companies around will most likely also get bene-fit from this information.

Shared values

In order to find out if the companies in Vaggeryd have the same values, the authors asked questions regarding developing the municipality, the region and how if there is any coop-eration between the companies in the municipality and the region. The companies in Vaggeryd score high, around 7 on how they think their neighbouring companies thinks about developing both the municipality and the region. Regarding the cooperation they scored a bit lower, around 6. These points are higher than what the companies in Nässjö scored but about the same as the companies in Jönköping.

Buzz

Bathelt, et al,. (2004) discuss the importance of buzz within a cluster. One way to create buzz is that companies have informal information transmitted between each other. The companies in Vaggeryd ranked question 15, 5 points out of 10 on how much information that occur between companies is informal information. This shows that informal infor-mation exists, but one must not forget that the ways this information later is used or shared is equally important. For Vaggeryd the Euro highway 4 has a huge impact for the munici-pality, but what the companies lack is the access to railroads, which could positively affect the buzz. This due to an easier accessability to communicate and conduct both unexpected and expected meetings.

Governmental institutions

The companies in Vaggeryd has a relatively high contact with educational instances such as universities but request more contact, thus the score on question 8 is around 6. Enright

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(1998) mentions how contacts through through universities could affect clusters positively. The companies in Vaggeryd calls for more than university education, namely vocational education, a reason for this answer could be that most of the companies in Vaggeryd are small or medium sized, but also that many of them are manufacturing companies who need this kind of education more than the university level. Even if there are some issues that the municipality needs to attend, the companies in Vaggeryd are generally satisfied by the mu-nicipality’s work. Vaggeryd municipality thinks their cooperation with the companies within the municipality is great, almost 10 out of 10. An interesting view is that the companies scored much lower on the same question. Meaning that the perception of the companies regarding the cooperation is worse than what the municipality thinks. From figure 4-11, one can clearly see that the municipality score in general, higher than what the companies did. Further there are divided perceptions regarding cooperation with governmental institu-tions. Generally speaking Vaggeryds municipality has a better correlation between their an-swers than what Nässjö companies and municipality have.

5.3 Industry based

5.3.1 Manufacturing companies

Most answers from the manufacturing sector are on average, 5 out of 10. Two things that are clearly visible are that they believe that cooperation with the municipality is important and that the geographical location is very good for logistics. Apart from these two state-ments, it is hard to draw any conclusions from the manufacturing companies.

Global pipelines

Do global pipelines exist for manufacturing companies? At least a contact to some extent do exist, since the manufacturing companies gave question 16, 6 points out of 10, meaning that there are quite extensive contacts with companies abroad. Question 17 answers how important this information is for the companies, and for the manufacturing companies this information is important. They ranked this question around 6 out of 10. As have been said before, Bathelt, et al., (2004) conclude that the impact of having global piplines in a cluster is vital for a cluster to fully function.

Shared values

The manufacturing companies thinks that their neighboring companies have the almost the same shared values, 6 out of 10 points for question 9. But a bit lower on question 10, where the score is around 5. On the questions 11 and 12 the manufacturing companies be-lieve that their neighboring companies has an on average similar view when speaking about the cooperation between companies in the municipality, around 5 and the same regarding the cooperation between companies in the region. Generally speaking the answers on these questions are in the middle of the 1-10 scale and therefore show that there is not a strong willingness of developing either the municipality or the region, this is also regarding the co-operation within the municipality or the region.

Buzz

The manufacturing companies have an average amount of informal information when they interact with other companies. On question 15, 5 points out of 10 were given, meaning that roughly 50 percent of the information between companies is informal information. Bathelt,

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et al,. (2004) mentions the importance of having buzz within a cluster that could occure through informal information.

Governmental institutions

Regarding how much more contact manufacturing companies want with educational in-stances, they answered 5 out of 10. Enright (1998) mentions that having a good relation-ship to universities and other governmental institutions can have a great impact on a cluster since it could generate buzz for the cluster, and therefore also benefit these companies in areas such as improved knowledge, shared ideas and competence.

5.3.2 Logistics companies

From the findings logistics companies are not dependent on neither regional companies nor those in the municipalities. These two facts can indicate that the companies have most of their customers in other parts of Sweden and they are mostly utilizing the geographical location of the region. The location of this region is considered excellent and most logistics companies feel that they have support in their regional development visions from other companies. This can be explained by the fact that logistics companies are very dependent on infrastructure and they work very hard to develop the region’s infrastructure.

Global pipelines

Logistics companies in the region tend to have little contact with foreign companies and the importance of this contact is rather limited. The logistics companies awarded the grade 4 on how much information they share with companies abroad. Further they also said that the importance of this information is about 4 out of 10 for the company. Bathelt, et al,. (2004) discuss the importance of these ‘global pipelines’ and how they are a vital part of a clusters, since they generate new information to both the companies and to the cluster if such thing exists.

Shared values

To a high extent the logistics companies believe that there their neighboring companies have the same beliefs when speaking about developing the municipality, around 9. The score on the question regarding the development of the region the answers are also high, around 8. When it comes to the beliefs of having the same thoughts regarding cooperation between companies, the logistics companies gave a similar answer as the manufacturing companies, around 5.

Buzz

Regarding how much informal information the logistics companies have with other com-panies is around 5, which is almost the same as what the manufacturing companies an-swered. Bathelt, et al,. (2004) mentions how informal information could lead to what they call buzz, which is a vital part of their model of how a cluster works.

Governmental institutions

The logistics companies have a lower score on how much more contact they want with ed-ucational instances than what manufacturing companies have. This could be because most of the logistics companies are large companies and as what have been said before, large companies have greater resources to meet this demand internally within the business group.

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5.4 Regional overview

Bathelt, et al., (2004) talkes about global pipelines as a tube from which information is pumped into the cluster. From the short questions one can clearly see that all kinds of companies regardless of where they are situated, size or industry has to some extent infor-mation flowing through these pipelines. Of course it differs from each company but as the overall radar chart shows the average is around 5.5. This means that in average 55 percent of all companies information comes from these types of pipelines. Generally speaking this would create a buzz which is a vital part when speaking about clusters. The average score on how much exchange of informal information is around 4.7 or in other words 47 percent of the information exchange between companies is informal. This could also support that the buzz Bathelt, et al., (2004) talks about exist.

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The JNV Region

Jönköping Municipality

Nässjö Municipality

Vaggeryd Municipality

Global pipelines

Regional buzz

Governmental buzz

Local buzz

Actors, firms

Governmental institutions (including

municipalities)

Components

Figure 5-1, Cluster model inspired by (Bathelt, et al., 2004).

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In The figure 5-1 the region and it is three municipalities is displayed and the figure is in-spired by the Bathelt, et al,. (2004) model, which is figure 3-1. In this figure the numbers of all components in the model are calculated by percent from the results of specific short questions. Namely those questions which equal or correspond to each component. The au-thors made four different basic calculations for each municipality in order to see how much buzz there is; between companies locally, between companies in different municipalities, between companies and the amount of buzz generated from global pipelines. The results from these four areas are the authors’ interpretation from the companies’ view of percep-tion. The regional buzz arrows do not correspond to its destination, only the number of ar-rows in and out from each municipality should be taken into consideration. Since the figure is based on the map of how the region looks like, the actors and firms location in the figure has no correspondence to their actual location. What is accurate is the number of actors and firms in each municipality and in the region that was interviewed.

The average score from the equivalent question is converted, meaning an answer from i.e. question 13 states 5 out of 10 equals 50 percent which further equals 0.5. Then the authors calculated the number of communication routes between the actors/firms within each mu-nicipality, which could be done by using the formula (n^2-n)/2, where n stands for the number of actors/firms in the municipality. For example, if one looks at Vaggeryds munic-ipality which has four companies, using the formula given above, on can find that the an-swer 6. This means that there are a minimum of 6 communication routes in order to enable all companies to communicate directly.

To calculate the number of arrows within the municipality, the authors took the answer on the relevant question and converted these into percent and then multiplied this percentage with the number of possible communication routes. This gives the total amount of com-munication between the companies in the region. However, since only the informal buzz is considered in this model, one needs to convert the answers to question 15 which regards informal communication in to a percentage and then multiply this with the result from the previous calculation. Now one ends up with the total number of informal connections in the municipality. In this example, there are 4 companies in a municipality and the perceived dependency on other local companies is a 5 on the scale and the score for the informal communication is 5. Four companies equal 6 communication routes and 6*0, 5*0,5 equal 1.5 informal communication routes. In order to simply the model, all numbers are rounded up. However, due to errors when rounding up, the authors had to round Jönköping’s re-gional buzz down from 2.2 to 2, instead of rounding it up which would be standard prac-tice.

The following concept has been used on all these four areas, but to be extra clear the for-mulas how to calculate the number of buzz arrows for each component can be viewed be-low.

Local buzz = Number of companies routes * question 13(dependency on local companies) * question 15 (informal communication)

Regional buzz = Number of companies routes * question 14 (dependency on re-gional companies) * question 15 (informal communication)

Governmental buzz = Number of companies * question four (The importance of cooperation with the municipality)

Global pipelines = Number of companies * question 16 (The amount of foreign contacts)

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As been said before this figure displays the region’s and its three municipalities’ current sit-uation from the companies perception. Conclusions that can be drawn from the model are firstly; that the majority of the companies in each municipality have a high level of govern-mental buzz. Secondly that Vaggeryd has the highest level of local and regional buzz com-pared to the other two municipalities and that Jönköping has the lowest amount of regional buzz. Finally, that all three municipalities almost have the same amount of global pipelines.

Context forFirm Strategy

& Rivalry

Factor (Input)Conditions

Related &SupportingIndustries

Demand

Conditions

+ Excellent geographical location+ Large pool of labour+/- Good infrastructure but needs imporvement+Jönköping University- Lack of skilled labour- No sea port- No international flights- Not enough vocational education

+ The municipalities wants to cooperate+ Torsvik logistics area+ Entrepreneurial spirit- Municipalities are not collaborating effeciently- Few meeting places for the companies- Low involvment in informal information exchange

+ Continious growth for many years+ Population increases+ Many companies in the region- Outsourcing of production- Uncertain economic future- Companies’ contracts with 3PLs are not for a indefinite time period

+ Good IT competence+ Many transport companies exist+ Logpoint Business network and Logkomp- No regional support company (unified marketing, etc)

Figure 5-2, Diamond model for JNV

The figure, 5-2 shows Porter’s Diamond model and its results comes from both interviews, questionnaires and the authors’ perception of the findings of this thesis. This model gives a good overview of the region JNV from a more holistic point of view.

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6 Conclusions This chapter contains seven conclusions that the authors found vital from the discussion chapter and also contain the answers on the research questions of this thesis and future re-search.

Large logistics companies tend to isolate themselves to a certain degree. Based on the findings of the large companies, the authors dedicated these companies the name DLC due to their way of behaving and answers from the interviews. The DLC’s according to the authors have tendencies to correspond to Markusens’ (1996) two districts, hub-and-spoke and the satellite district.

The perception of the authors’ is that company size has a greater impact on how companies act and behave than what they originally thought. Thus the authors be-lieve that there are linkages between company size and willingness to be part of a cluster.

In general questions that asks the companies’ opinion regarding both the munici-pality and the region, in the majority of the cases the results is lower on the regional level than on the municipal level.

The three municipalities are generally satisfied with their geographical location, but one thing that almost all companies call for is improved infrastructure. From the companies point of view this seems to be the most vital part in order for them to fully function.

From the figure 5-1 of the three municipalities, Vaggeryd is the municipality which has the highest level correspondence to Bathelts’, et al., (2004) theoretical model, according to the authors.

Jönköping municipality has a very low amount of regional buzz, which can be clear-ly seen in figure 5-1, only two regional buzz arrows from the largest municipality.

The municipalities tend to overestimate their performance compared to the com-panies’ perception. This is especially true for Nässjö municipality while Jönköping municipality has the least difference between the two parties’ answers.

Based on the findings in this thesis can the current situation in the Jönköping – Nässjö – Vaggeryd region be described as a logistics cluster?

The authors’ perception of the region JNV is that, there is no obvious logistic cluster. When comparing figure 5-1 to Bathelts’, et al., (2004) model, the authors believe that there is insufficient amount of buzz within the whole region. On the other hand the authors be-lieve that the model would look much more different if the large companies were excluded. Therefore in order for this region to become a cluster, the authors perception is that large companies needs to change, or small and medium sized companies need to offer a better win-win situation when it comes to information sharing. The willingness to cooperate seems to be present in the region but in order for a cluster to be formed, the companies need to put more effort in to creating contacts.

How do the companies and the politicians experience the cooperation within the region and how can this be improved?

The figures 4-10 to 4-12 gives a good overview of this, one can clearly see that in Jönkö-ping municipality, the companies and the politicians has answered almost identical. In Vaggeryd it is a similar story, the differences are a bit greater though. On the other hand, Nässjö is the municipality that differs most of the three municipalities. In general the coop-

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eration between the municipalities is good, but something that some companies worries about, is that there is too much rivalry between the politicians within the three municipali-ties. One example is the discussion about the container terminal in the region. It is regard-ing these larger decisions that this region need to be more unified.

6.1 Future Research

The authors suggest the following areas for further research within the field of logistics clusters;

Further develop the study by interviewing more companies in the region

Interviewing politicians in opposition

Comparing the current situation in the JNV-region with other regions in Sweden

Comparing the current situation in the JNV-region with other regions abroad.

Conducting a follow up-study based on the same interviewees after the Logkomp-project is completed in 2013.

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7 References

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7.2 Interviews

Olsson, O., 2012. Länet i Siffror [Interview] (21 mars 2012).

Green, M. (2012, May 12). Logistics in Jönköping. (M. Näversten, & V. Pettersson, Interviewers)

Lilja, B. (2012, April 18). Logistics in Vaggeryd. (M. Näversten, & V. Pettersson, Interviewers)

Zander, B. (2012, May 5). Logistics in Nässjö. (M. Näversten, & V. Pettersson, Interviewers)

7.3 Internet sources

Airport, J., 2012. Jönköping Airport. [Online] Available at: http://www.jonkopingairport.se/home_en.html [Accessed 3 March 2012].

Deloitte, 2012. The cluster for logistics. [Online] Available at: http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_LU/lu/industries/transports-logistics/cluster-for-logistics/index.htm [Accessed 11 may 2012].

Jönköping, 2012a. Historien om Jönköping. [Online] Available at: http://jonkoping.se/toppmeny/omkommunen/faktaomjonkoping/historienomjonkoping.4.664ded771163cfcb190800026026.html [Accessed 21 March 2012].

Jönköping, H. i., 2012b. Om Högskolan. [Online] Available at: http://hj.se/om-hogskolan.html [Accessed 22 March 2012].

Logistik, I., 2012. Intelligent logistik. [Online] Available at: http://www.intelligentlogistik.se/logistiklagen.php [Accessed 6 March 2012].

Logkomp, 2012. Bakgrund. [Online] Available at: http://logkomp.se/projektet/bakgrund.4.514927ee135a610afd280001387.html [Accessed 24 April 2012].

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LogPoint, 2012. Log Point. [Online] Available at: http://www.logpoint.se/ [Accessed 02 Mach 2012].

Nässjö, 2012a. Nässjöbygdens historia. [Online] Available at: http://nassjo.se/Om-kommunen/Naessjoebygdens-historia [Accessed 21 March 2012].

Nässjö, L. P., 2012b. Logistic Park Nässjö. [Online] Available at: http://www.logisticpark.se/ [Accessed March 03 2012].

Regionförbundet, 2012. Länet i siffror. [Online] Available at: http://www.regionjonkoping.se/web/lanet_i_siffror.aspx [Accessed 27 February 2012].

SCB, 2012. Statistik efter ämne. [Online] Available at: http://www.scb.se/Pages/SubjectAreaList____258486.aspx [Accessed 23 March 2012].

Trafikverket, 2012. Sveriges Järnvägar. [Online] Available at: http://www.trafikverket.se/Privat/Vagar-och-jarnvagar/Sveriges-jarnvagsnat/ [Accessed 4 March 2012].

Vaggeryd, L. C., 2012. Logistics - Logistics. [Online] Available at: http://www.vaggerydlogcenter.se/ [Accessed 02 March 2012].

Wallonia, L. i., 2012. Logistics in Wallonia Competitiveness Clusters: Mission. [Online] Available at: http://clusters.wallonie.be/logisticsinwallonia/en/directions-for-development/index.html [Accessed 11 May 2012].

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8 Appendix

8.1 Appendix A

The location quotient is calculated to highlight the importance of a certain industry in a specific region. The local areas are compared to a wider area to determine the relationship in that region between a specific industry and the overall economy. (Brantingham & Brantingham, 1998)

If the quotient is larger than 1, the sector in the selected region is larger compared to other industries in the region, compared to the same ration for a wider area, for example the whole nation. Further, the sector is then considered specialized and one can assume that the region exports its goods or services (Isserman , 2007).

Location quotient is calculated as follows:

Formel 8-1, Location Quotient

LQ

e∑e

E∑E

Where:

e Employmentinspecificsectorintheregion

e Totalemplymentintheregion

E Employmentinspecificsectorinthewiderarea

E Totalemploymentinthewiderarea

(ibid.)

Parts of an Excel file obtained from Ola Olsson at Regional Development Council of Jön-köping County via e-mail on 2012-03-21.

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Table 8-1, Employee statistics

Location Quotients calculated by using the total share of employees in each sector in each municipality divided by the totalt share of employees in each sector in the nation (‘Riket’ in the table above). G02 is Manufacturing industry and G06 is transportation and storage.

Förvärvsarbetande 16+ år med bostad i regionen (nattbefolkning) efter

tid, region, ålder och bransch

G01 jordbruk, skogsG02 tillverkning G03 energiförsöG04 byggverksamG05 handel G06 transport oc

fiske miljöverksamhet

2010

  0665 Vaggeryd

    20‐24 13 171 3 42 57 38

    25‐34 16 332 7 76 124 77

    35‐44 38 574 12 96 169 76

    45‐54 40 552 12 81 105 81

    55‐59 23 200 5 30 48 34

    60‐64 51 168 5 31 53 41

Summa 181 1997 44 356 556 347

Andel 3,0% 33,2% 0,7% 5,9% 9,2% 5,8%

  0680 Jönköping

    20‐24 50 656 18 515 1466 559

    25‐34 108 1910 75 680 2003 1121

    35‐44 107 2449 111 755 2003 902

    45‐54 160 2087 104 672 1482 864

    55‐59 76 768 45 252 542 348

    60‐64 108 647 48 292 516 267

Summa 609 8517 401 3166 8012 4061

Andel 1,0% 14,6% 0,7% 5,4% 13,7% 7,0%

  0682 Nässjö

    20‐24 24 189 3 106 200 125

    25‐34 38 417 14 139 315 225

    35‐44 45 763 33 267 407 173

    45‐54 71 666 37 230 299 288

    55‐59 48 268 15 93 155 162

    60‐64 66 216 18 87 119 105

Summa 292 2519 120 922 1495 1078

Andel 2,3% 19,7% 0,9% 7,2% 11,7% 8,4%

Förvärvsarbetande 16+ år med bostad i regionen (nattbefolkning) efter

tid, ålder och bransch

G01 jordbruk, skogsG02 tillverkning G03 energiförsöG04 byggverksamG05 handel G06 transport oc

fiske miljöverksamhet

RIKET

  20‐24 5390 34729 2065 32965 76399 19364

  25‐34 9523 102945 7283 57982 125204 43388

  35‐44 13070 167796 11026 72179 133338 49268

  45‐54 18005 155902 11934 66434 103201 58480

  55‐59 9825 63011 5827 27097 39093 25904

  60‐64 12452 49045 5183 26184 34295 21200

Summa 68265 573428 43318 282841 511530 217604

Andel 1,6% 13,7% 1,0% 6,8% 12,3% 5,2%

57

8.2 Appendix B

How important is the logistics industry for the municipality?

Describe Jönköping from a logistics point of view?

What weaknesses can you identify within the cooperation between the municipality and the companies and what can X do to improve the situations for companies?

How can the cooperation between the municipalities in the region be improved?

What is your view on cooperation in the future, between the municipalities as well as between companies and the municipality?

Rate X’s location from a logistics point of view, 1-10

Rate the region’s location from a logistics point of view, 1-10

Rate the importance of cooperation between the municipalities and companies, 1-10

Rate how good X is at cooperating with companies in the municipality, 1-10

Rate how good X is at cooperating with companies in the region, 1-10

Rate how good X is at cooperating with other instances, such as agencies, associa-tions, educational instances, etc. in the region, 1-10

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8.3 Appendix C

1. Rate X’s location from a logistics point of view, 1-10 2. Rate the region’s location from a logistics point of view, 1-10 3. How much did the geographical location effect your choice of location, 1-10 4. Rate the importance of cooperation between the municipalities and compa-

nies, 1-10 5. Rate how good X is at cooperating with companies in the municipality, 1-10 6. Rate how good X is at cooperating with companies in the region, 1-10 7. Rate how good X is at cooperating with other instances, such as agencies,

associations, educational instances, etc. in the region, 1-10 8. How much would you gain from a better contact with local universities,

such as Jönköping University, 1-10 9. To what extent do you and other companies in the municipality share the

same views about developing the local municipality, 1-10 10. To what extent do you and other companies in the region share the same

views about developing the region, 1-10 11. To what extent do you and other companies in the municipality share the

same views about cooperation, 1-10 12. To what extent do you and other companies in the region share the same

views about cooperation, 1-10 13. To what extent do you feel dependent on other companies in the municipali-

ty, 1-10 14. To what extent do you feel dependent on other companies in the region, 1-10 15. What proportion of the information between your company and other com-

pany is not made up from business transactions, 1-10 16. How much contact do you have with companies outside of Sweden, 1-10 17. What importance do foreign companies have on your daily business, 1-10

How important is the logistics industry for the municipality?

Describe X from a logistics point of view

What weaknesses can you identify within the cooperation between the municipality and the companies and what can X do to improve the situations for companies?

How can the cooperation between the municipalities in the region be improved?

What is your view on cooperation in the future, between the municipalities as well as between companies and the municipality?

Do you know the concept of cluster?

Would you say that there is a cluster or an agglomeration in the municipality today?

Would you say that there is a cluster or an agglomeration in the region today?

Would you say that the municipality is working for or against you?

Would you say that the region is working for or against you?

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8.4 Appendix D

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8.5 Appendix E

1. How great is the importance of the logistics industry for the municipality? Jönköping Very important, the industry is investing a lot into the municipality. Quite important, since there is a lot of logistics companies in this area. This gener-ates a lot of taxes for the municipality. All manufacturing are dependent on streams and the industry is crucial. Considering the municipality’s’ location, logistics is one of the most important businesses. Very important for companies, none the less infrastructure Vital for the municipality’s future. The logistics business is very important for the municipality, it is a big part of what Jönköping is today. Through the municipality’s geographically perfect situation a great number of large companies have made their decision to locate here and there-fore created a lot of work opportunities to the municipality. Nässjö Not as important as Nässjö municipality wants to believe, there are other things that are more important. Important Very important Very important, it is a core business. It tends to become more and more important. It’s a central, Nässjö can focus on its good strategic situation, which feels totally right. Vaggeryd It is important that the right infrastructure is available. Very important since the municipality is well geographically situated along the Euro highway 4.The municipality has a good infrastructure such as railroads and the con-tainer terminal. Incredibly important and it is continuing to develop. Without the Euro highway 4 our company wouldn’t exist. We wish for more railroad connections, since nothing is happening on that front. Trucks works but is dependent on a good infrastructure. Very important for future expansions.

2. Describe the municipality from a logistics point of view Jönköping Good, more railroads and better container terminal is needed though. Logpoint makes investments which is good. Good geographical spot, hence the great number of logistics businesses. Centrally situated with large resources when speaking about transport, distribution and other logistics services. The municipality has a great location seen from a Scandinavian perspective.

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The city of Jönköping has one of the best spots in Sweden seen from a logistics point of view. One can reach almost anything within three to four hours. Good in-frastructure with railroads. Has the geographical advantages, investments in infrastructure are made, which is good and the municipality also invest in higher education. We buy, sell and keep goods in warehouses, it is though the logistic that we become more effective and that is also a large contributor to why we chose to look towards the future. The logistics for the company is not perfect, but we are continuously working to develop it since the customers demand a high level of service level. In-ternal logistics is one of the vital parts in order to fulfill that. None the less the ex-ternal logistic is equally important. Nässjö Jönköping is a good logistic spot, for us the closeness to Jönköping has a certain impact. The railroad is of course important, to become the railroad hub for the middle part of Sweden. But I think that many companies will not benefit from fur-ther investment in logistics, the area I think can be improved and will generate more for the municipality is to invest in infrastructure from Nässjö to Linköping which will increase the satisfaction of commuting since a lot of competence is situ-ated there. Nässjö nicely situated when speaking about railroads, the resources for logistics business is enough for the moment. Awesome situation second best compared to Jönköping. The geographically inertial center for all transport flows in Sweden. Is situated in the “middle” of Sweden with a railroad that will be great in the future, mainline with four intersections to Gothenburg, Halmstad, Oskarshamn nad Kal-mar. Our transports are great and accounts for a great deal of our costs. We have about 300 km to our three big markets Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. Logistics and material handling are both essential to us. Vaggeryd Is perfectly situated along the Euro highway 4 which is the main artery through Sweden. Geographically right, different types of transport centers which tend to seek this spot. Flourishing municipality. Is situated totally right from a logistcs point of view. Incredibly important to keep developing the industry and infrastructure is very im-portant.

3. What weaknesses can you identify within the cooperation between the mu-nicipality and the companies and what can X do to improve the situations for companies? Jönköping Generally satisfied with Logpoint. Investments needs to be made within the con-tainer terminal and railroads. The municipality could develop the flight connections to big international cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Another improvement could be to develop the infra-structure since good communication is essential for a large company as us.

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Generally for all municipalities that we have business in; easier laws, lower fees, faster paperwork. The most important that the municipality can do is to ensure an extended construc-tion of railroads and container terminals. Lower taxes and hire younger people should be of higher priorities. The municipality has other high prioritizing goals than the companies has in this sector. The municipality’s ability to react and adapt to the market, are to slow. De-velop national highway 40 since it’s an important artery, meaning companies that settles down in Gothenburg could instead locate in Jönköping. The climate should be more open for a better cooperation. Nässjö Aim and invest on education so that good competence flows into companies. Invests too much in new companies compared to those already situated companies. no suggestion The understanding for small to medium sized companies when it come sto localiza-tion alternatives. That the municipality could be more helpful when it comes to attract new custom-ers to this area. Try to get a better communication. Vaggeryd No opinion Not much to, good as it is. The municipality has a website which aims to attract new companies to the area, it should be the opposite. It’s easy to do a website and brochures but harder to find the customers. The municipality should go out to the potential companies and promote themseveles and argue why they should locate in Vaggeryd. Understand the need for personal and to concentrate on locally educations.

4. How can the cooperation between the municipalities in the region be im-proved? Jönköping Maybe through more cooperations like LogPoint. Unified marketing from the region, cooperating more than competing. Offer small companies help to exhibit themselves on trade fairs in a JNV-booth. Be more unified in larger questions, less thinking about their own interest first. Everyone wants to grow but sometimes on needs to realize that they might gain more from having the business in one of the other municipalities and putting more effort into what they know the best. We don’t think they want to cooperate any more based on what we have seen. They need to work together in important issues that regard the region. They need to cooperate with companies in prioritzed questions regarding infrastructure and marketing of the region. They need to have a unified agenda to follow. No Opinion. Nässjö Use Destination Jönköping/NNAB/Vaggeryd näringslivsråd to develop good con-tacts between companies and politicians in the region.

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No opinion. No opinion. More communication between politicians and companies. They need to develop a plan of actions that everyone can sign up for and then stick to this plan unless everyone agrees otherwise. No opinion. Vaggeryd More cooperation regarding education, high school/university/”KY” Get a more holistic view and put money where there is the best possibility, regard-less where in the region this might be. Remove all the prestige and all protectionistic persons in power. Work more like the Gislaved, Gnosjö, Vaggeryd and Värnamo (GGVV)-municipalities.

5. How can the cooperation between the municipalities in the region be im-proved? Logpoint business network should continue to develop. Developing competence and infrastructure is the most important challenges. It is good to have local suppliers as it cuts communication delays. Regional devel-opment is very important. There are always things you can learn from cooperating and business networks can help create contacts. More cooperation is needed to strengthing the infrastructure in the area. No opinion. For us and our suppliers competence is very important and the region must contin-ue to work for improved competence in the region. Attractive living, good com-muting possibilities and a high level in all education is needed for this. Nässjö municipality are putting more effort in existing companies than in attracting new companies. They promote cooperation between companies in the municipality and other companies. We believe in more cooperation with other companies, primarily local companies as this makes everything easier and faster. Cooperation between companies and the municipality need improvement. It is imporant to set up good goal and make sure the cooperation works towards these goals. There are good possibilities to develop cooperation between companies and the municipality. You need to have holistic point of view and make sure that you utilize what each region or municipality is best suited for otherwise you might have several instances on an average level than one really good instance in the region. No opinion. Cooperation will be improve and needs to be improved. Infrastuctrual improvements are needed. It is very good when business networks are created and companies can exchange information on all levels. Cooperation needs to be improved! Sweden is a small country and we need to co-operate to be successful. Some kind of cooperation with informal contacts is needed. We need highly skilled personell and for this we need the entire region to recruit from. It is also important that the education is of high quality. There are not many industries in the region like ours but other contacts might be useful.

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We need to cooperate to strengthen the region and through cooperation we can learn a lot from each other. We have a positive view of the future with more cooperation.

6. Do you know the concept of cluster? The Logpoint area is a good example of a cluster. No. Yes. I believe so. I believe so. A group of companies working towards a unified goal. No. An area with a lot of actors in the same industry where know-how is created. Yes. No. Yes. No. No. No. No. Yes. I believe so.

7. Would you say that there is a cluster or an agglomeration in the municipality today? Jönköping Torsvik is a logistics cluster, otherwise agglomeration. Not very clear but more a agglomeration than a cluster. No opinion. No opinion. More like an agglomeration than a cluster. Cluster. It is a mix but more an agglomeration than a cluster. Nässjö Agglomeration. Somewhere in between, working towards a cluster. No opinion. Working towards a cluster. Both, small city where everyone knows each other. Leaning towards a cluster. More like an agglomeration than a cluster. Vaggeryd Cluster Cluster I would like to argue that it is more towards a agglomeration, companies have their own solutions but do not share each others possibilities.

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Agglomeration.

8. Would you say that there is a cluster or an agglomeration in the region to-day? agglomeration today but has potential to become a cluster. Not black and white, in some areas there might be clusters, IT for example. Cluster. Custer. Cluster. Agglomeration working towards a cluster. There might be smaller clusters on municipal levels but not on a regional level. No opinion. I would like to argue that it is more towards a agglomeration, companies have their own solutions but do not share each others possibilities. No opinion. Working towards a cluster, maybe in five years time. More like an agglomeration than a cluster. Cluster. More like an agglomeration than a cluster. No opinion. Agglomeration. More like an agglomeration than a cluster.

9. Would you say that the municipality is working for or against you?

Jönköping For us. They do not work against us but doesn’t contribute anything, except when it comes to environmental issues. For us. More for us than against us. For us. For us. For us.

Nässjö They do not work against us but doesn’t contribute anything, but it seems that it is changing. For us. No opinion. For us. Not against us but improvement is needed. For us.

Vaggeryd For us. For us.

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For us. For us, they are more dependent on us than we on them.

10. Would you say that the region is working for or against you?

No opinion. No real base for a opinion. For us. The region doesn’t contribute anything for us. For us. They are slowly starting to cooperate. Probably started with the logistics field and is now developing in to other areas as well. For us. No opinion. The region works against us more that with us, sometimes very much against us.! No opinion. For us. For us. We don’t believe that the municipalities look after what is best for the region, rather look at their own interests first. Not against us. We need the region but the region does extend a helping hand to the companies. No opinion. They are not working against us but not for us either.

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8.6 Appendix F

1. How great is the importance of the logistics industry for the municipality?

Jönköping

Every serious industry, such as the logistics industry, that operates in the municipality is important, partly due to all inhabitants working in the industry and partly due to the devel-opment that the industry brings to the municipality. The logistics industry is very important for the continual development of the municipality and it has put Jönköping on the map from several points of view (Green, 2012). Nässjö

The Logistics industry is very important for Nässjö and the central geographical location is our main asset. Nässjö is built up around the railroad with both passenger and goods trans-portation. Jernhusen AB(A Swedish government enterprise that owns buildings attached to the rail network in Sweden) owns a container terminal along the Southern main line. In-vestments in the logistics industry have been a focus area in our local industry development plans for several years. Nässjö, together with Jönköping and Vaggeryd is an important lo-gistics node in the country (Zander, 2012).

Vaggeryd

The development within the industry is very important for the development of the munici-pality. We can clearly feel that our favorable location along the Euro highway 4 and the railroad attracts companies. The new container terminal in the area has further strengthen this view (Lilja, 2012).

2. Describe municipality from a logistics point of view?

Jönköping

In Jönköping we have good manufacturing companies, excellent IT-consultants, good ad-vertising agencies and effective logistics companies, among others industries. There are numerous ways of describing Jönköpings position can be described in several ways – it is an attractive position, it is a logistics position and it is a position for the future. Within 24 hours, one can reach a market with 100 million inhabitants in northern Europe. From a lo-gistics point of view, there possibilities for all modes of transport and logistics functions, such as railroad, trucks, air transportation, central storage facilities, 3PLs and other forms of services attached to the logistics industry. This means that companies have great flexibil-ities in Jönköping and this is very good for the end-customer. The magazine Intelligent logistics ranked in 2012 Jönköping/Nässjö/Vaggeryd as the third best logistics locations in Sweden in Sweden. The region has been in the top of the list for 8 years and it is based on actual establishments made, such as warehouses and 3PL facilities for distribution of consumer goods, mainly to other parts of Sweden. The region gains points in the survey by adding areas for logistics operations, increased rail-road operations between Jönköping and Gothenburg and three container terminals in the area, which makes it easy to take imported goods to Jönköping. There is also research and education with in the logistics and supply chain management field at Jönköping Interna-tional Business school and at the school of Engineering. There is also an active cooperation

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within the logistics field between the three municipalities that increases the competitiveness of the region. Examples of these cooperations are the ESF project LogKomp and the co-ordination around the Future Transport fair at Elmia (Green, 2012). Nässjö

The Logistics industry is very important for Nässjö and the central geographical location is our main asset. Nässjö is built up around the railroad with both passenger and goods trans-portation. Jernhusen AB(A Swedish government enterprise that owns buildings attached to the rail network in Sweden) owns a container terminal along the Southern main line. In-vestments in the logistics industry have been a focus area in our local industry development plans for several years. Nässjö, together with Jönköping and Vaggeryd is an important lo-gistics node in the country (Zander, 2012).

Vaggeryd

Vaggeryd is a part of the Gislaved, Gnosjö, Vaggeryd and Värnamo (GGVV) region which is one of the most goods producing regions in the country, good logistics is an absolute ne-cessity in order to keep this position in the top.

The manufacturing in the region means that there is a huge demand for transports, both in and out of the region.

Today Vaggeryd attracts new refined logistics companies for two reasons, the proximity to the railroad and Euro highway 4, but also because Vaggeryd is in a very good geographical-ly speaking for the Sweden, the Nordic region and the market in northern Euruope (Lilja, 2012).

3. What weaknesses can you identify within the cooperation between the mu-nicipality and the companies and what can the municipality do to improve the situations for companies?

Jönköping

Jönköping municipality is through its administration and trade council strategically working to enhance the business climate to enable as good development as possible. An important aspect for the companies is to have access to skilled workers, Jönköping municipality has through its trade council, Destination Jönköping, a project that aims to help the companies attract competence to them. The project is called Welcome2work and it is a cooperation between around 30 companies that are influential in Jönköping’s development (Green, 2012).

Nässjö

Cooperation between the companies and the municipality in general is of course very im-portant and good contact networks are often a prerequisite for cooperation. I believe that the municipality has good a working contact network with the companies in the municipali-ty but nothing is so good that it can not be improved. Among other things, we conduct regular visits to the companies. We work with the ‘one-door method’ within the framework for ‘our’ trade council company NNAB, for which the municipality is a large financial con-tributor. For more information see www.nnab.se

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The cooperation between the municipality and the companies can definitely be improved when it comes to future competence sustentation. It could be regarding strengthening the educations available and have an active dialog about these (Zander, 2012).

Vaggeryd

I believe that the cooperation is very satisfying as it is today. The municipality, the compa-nies and the trade council are working to develop and further strengthen he municipality’s logistics profile. We could probably do more but it feels very satisfying as it is today (Lilja, 2012).

4. How can the cooperation between the municipalities in the region be im-proved?

Jönköping

The cooperation between the municipalities in Jönköping County that works with the logis-tics industry is developing through the Regional council in Jönköping County, where there is a cooperation group with these municipalities as members. The Regional Council has signed an agreement with Invest Sweden regarding cooperation for international marketing of the region’s opportunities for logistics investments. The purpose of cooperation be-tween these municipalities and other parties is to promote growth and renewal in the re-gion’s logistics industries by attracting foreign investments in the form of new establish-ments, expansion investments, acquisitions and fusions, real estate investments and capital investments (Green, 2012).

Nässjö

Generally speaking there is an arena for cooperation between the municipalities, this could be improved further and that is work in progress. The municipalities are already cooperat-ing a lot on different levels with different ambitions (Zander, 2012).

Vaggeryd

There is a huge potential within this area, but sometimes a weakness shines through the competition between the municipalities. The competition should instead be a strength, that develops the region (Lilja, 2012).

5. What is your view on cooperation in the future, between the municipalities as well as between companies and the municipality?

Jönköping

Jönköping municipality has a bright view on future cooperation with other municipalities in Jönköping county. We have today good relations with Nässjö and Vaggeryd regarding the logistics industry but we see possibilities for other cooperations with other regions and municipalities regarding other strategic questions and industries. For example, we have a cooperation with Ulricehamn municipality regarding national high way 40 as well as the other municipalities affected but it. We are developing cooperation with companies through the municipal departments and the trade council in order to achieve a sustainable growth (Green, 2012).

Nässjö

See previous answers (Zander, 2012).

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Vaggeryd

We will strengthen our local profile and continue to develop cooperation between munici-palities and regions (Lilja, 2012).