An application of the Strategic Games Matrix for competitive and cooperative strategies modeling for the firms of a textile and apparel business cluster

Abstract

Despite the need of a generalized collaboration environment required to the implementationof any well-succeeded business cluster, the unavoidable decision-making autonomy and thefree enterprise context among the companies, usually operating as multiple and complexsupply chains, induce them to pursue their own interests, disconsidering the interest of otheragents involved. Such companies, whether competing or cooperating with each other,naturally give rise to different conflict of interest situations among themselves, that need tobe modeled, treated, conciliated, and managed. In this paper, a cooperative and competitivestrategy modeling to treat the relationships among clustered companies is presented, basedon concepts of the Games Theory. This work proposes the application of a methodology ofanalysis of these complex industrial arrangements using the Strategic Games Matrix (SGM)as the conceptual framework. It shows that SGM is an useful analytical and managerialsupport tool to deal with the multiple conflicts of interest among the several agents in acluster, both for descriptive and prescriptive purposes. This methodology is applied to the socalledPólo-Tec-Tex (Technological Pole of Textile Industries), a textile and apparel industrialand commercial cluster of companies, in the region of Americana city, in São Paulo state.