What is the role of networking of actors in the formation of the territorial attractiveness? Stakes and challenges for public action

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of the relationship between the "networking" of these actors, as a form of governance, and the formation of the territorial attractiveness of companies.  The objective is to show that beyond the financial and economic factors, the networking of actors through proximity constitutes one of the most important managerial issues for public action. Hence our main research question: "How does the networking of actors influence the construction of the territorial attractiveness of companies?

To answer this question, we have mobilized the theory of "proximity", which constitutes a way of enriching the approach in terms of territorial attractiveness. Thus, we confront five research proposals according to a double aspect: the first one concerns the influence of the different forms of proximity to the networking of actors involved in the formation of attractiveness and the second one aim at the influence of these networks in the formation of the territorial attractiveness of companies.

The main results of this research show that the networking of attractiveness actors can make a territory attractive, through the emergence of different relationships between these actors located in a territory. These relationships can be conceived through permanent and temporary geographic proximity, organizational proximity and institutional proximity. We have also shown that the network is able to explain territorial attractiveness, through the coordination mechanisms that it allows and the relational forms that it mobilizes to attract and facilitate the establishment of new activities. 

Our research has therefore attempted to take an innovative approach in the sense that we have sought to understand how the networking of actors influences the construction of the territorial attractiveness of companies, by mobilizing the theory of proximity. Indeed, the relationship between the mechanisms of proximity in a process of networking actors and territorial attractiveness remains a field not yet explored in the literature, particularly in the Moroccan context. The inclusion in this current has allowed us to go beyond the explanation of attractiveness by simple generic endowments. Indeed, we consider that in a logic of territorial development, such an explanation can lead to a harmful situation for the territories because of a concentration on price competitiveness leading to situations of one-upmanship.