Evaluating Collaboration and Governance in SME clusters

The need of collaboration among SMEs and improving governance has been perceived by the European Commission and by individual countries that promote since some years new organizational transformations of industrial-service systems into sustainable networks. The proposed paper is intended to address: How a manager of an individual SME, aiming to join an existing cluster, can evaluate a cluster that could be a "collaborative environment" for his small business; which main characteristics of the cluster governance have to be analyzed; which network structures appear to be preferable with a mutual profit? To help the manager to answers to these questions, the proposed work establishes a Cluster Reference Framework (CRF) structured in three dimensions: (i) the types of SME clusters; (ii) the types of governance (management) committee; (iii) the different ways of creating a network of small businesses, depending on whether or not there is a promoter or an independent will.