The Automotive Cluster South Fluminense: Industrial Agglomeration Experience or Collective Action?

This work aims to characterize the Automotive Cluster South Fluminense (CASF), inspired by the company's experience in the Cluster of Galicia Automoción Companies (CEAGA), Spain. The Cluster is located in the southeastern state of Rio de Janeiro, an important pole of the Brazilian automotive industry.  Since the 1990s, the municipalities of this region have been concentrating investments in the automotive industry, one of the principal factors responsible for the economic development of the state of Rio de Janeiro. After a major crisis during the 1980s, the automotive pole drew and focalized companies such as MAN Latin America (inaugurated 1996), PSA Peugeot Citroen (inaugurated 2000), Nissan (opened 2014) and Land Rover (opening in 2016), besides a number of domestic and foreign suppliers, thus generating almost 30 thousand jobs regionally. Created by PSA Peugeot Citroën in 2013, the Cluster relies upon a partnership with the Federation of Industries of Rio de Janeiro (FIRJAN), MAN Latin America and Nissan.  This study begins by presenting the most classical definitions of clusters, such as Schmitz & Nadvi (1999), which interprets it as a sectoral and geographical concentration of firms in which cooperation between organizations located within the same geographic region is strategic for gaining competitive advantage.  It then continues to feature the typical cluster model in the automotive sector and, finally, describes the political process of cluster creation within the South Fluminense region and the principal results of this collective action. The study applied a qualitative approach with interviews from diverse participants from both, the private sector and government, such as the first secretary of cluster strategic planning, responsible for the subcommittee consisting of members from the Cluster and the Municipal Secretary of Labor from the city of Resende.  As a result of this study, it was concluded that in the short term, the cluster aims to ensure competitive conditions for companies to develop and act upon strategic points, such as education, energy, transportation and housing.  Medium/long term planning intends to develop the structural competitiveness of the region, promoting cooperation as a way of developing competitiveness, promoting the exchange of knowledge, learning and cultural openness, leveraging increased structural investments and boosting sustainable mobility, everything through the joint efforts of business and government.  Finally, the study concluded that the motive for the creation of the Cluster created by the automakers is different from that described by leading expert authors on the subject.