The Performance of Seaport Clusters - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

Appendix 1: The Survey 241
An assessment of the competitive position of the LMPC vis a vis Houston
24. Assess the quality of the 15 factors discussed above for the LMPC and Houston’s port
cluster by placing a ‘□’ in the table for the score of the LMPC and a ‘○’ for the score of
Houston. The minimum score is –5, the maximum score is +5.
Variable Score
The presence of a labor force -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The presence of customers and suppliers -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The presence of knowledge spillovers -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The level of land prices and office rents -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The level of congestion -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The presence of internal competition -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The presence of cluster entry barriers (access to local knowledge,
networks and capital)
The presence of cluster exit barriers (immobile stall, fixed
investments and strong economic ties)
-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The diversity of the cluster population -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The diversity of cluster resources -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The presence of a culture of trust -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The presence of intermediaries -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The presence of embedded leader firms -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
The quality of solutions to the collective action problems -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
Opportunities for improving the cluster management
25. Indicate whether you disagree or agree with the following proposition:
Proposition Opinion
De ‘overall’ goal of cluster governance should be to improve the performance of
the port cluster.
In some cases, policies aimed at improving the performance of the cluster as a
whole can be disadvantageous for a few companies in the cluster. In such cases,
the cluster performance would benefit when such partial interests are ‘overruled’.
Agree / disagree/ no opinion
Agree / disagree/ no opinion