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

Chapter 7 – Analyzing the Performance of Seaport Clusters 75
firms in the cluster and senior managers of ‘embedded small and medium sized firms’ at the
top of the hierarchy 49 .
For each of the three case studies we developed an ‘initial expert list’ of about 20-30
industry experts, on the basis of internet sources (board members of associations, CEO’s of
firms in the cluster) and suggestions from one ‘embedded academic’. Prof. Welters identified
experts in Rotterdam, Prof. Jones in Durban, and Dr. Renner in the LMPC.
The initial list was expanded during the case study by asking industry experts to add new
experts, if they felt the list was incomplete. Individuals that were suggested by at least two
experts were added to the list 50 .
Table 11: Port experts in the three cases
Case Number of
initial
experts
Additional
experts
Participating
experts and
‘response rate’
Percentage experts
involved in cluster
governance 51
Average number of
years experience in
cluster
Rotterdam 41 8 N=43, 88% 90% 20
Durban 32 5 N=34, 92% 68% 17
LMPC 26 12 N=31, 80% 71% 19
In all the three cases, the response rate was very high: the vast majority of all the experts
that were identified did participate in the study. For this reason, we are confident that the
49 Since the focus is on cluster performance the vast majority of experts works in firms in the port.
Other stakeholders, such as environmentalists or regional planners are less important given the
research set-up.
50 Since the initial list in all three cases consists of experts with different backgrounds (from public
and private organizations and associations, and from firms engaging in different cluster
activities), and since the cluster ‘community’ has a dense network of relations (all experts know
the vast majority of the other experts), a biased expert list is unlikely.
51 The experts were asked to indicate whether were actively involved in projects in the interests of
the cluster. For instance, all experts serving at the board of an association are considered to be
involved in governance.