Safer Guildford

There has been an increasing trend in recent years for public agencies to work in partnership with each other and with commercial organizations, which has presented special managerial issues and problems. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 gave the police and local authorities a statutory duty to work in partnership in order to promote and improve community safety. One such partnership is Safer Guildford, which was formed before the legislation came into force and which consequently already had a range of community safety initiatives in place. However, the partnership still had to comply with the new legislation and had to conduct an audit of crime and disorder in its area and publish a strategy for dealing with it. By examining the progress of Safer Guildford using a management perspective, a number of lessons can be drawn that will inform the future management of community safety partnerships.     

Regionale Vernetzung als Beitrag zum Unternehmenserfolg – Entwicklung und Management von Cluster-Initiativen

Regional networking can help companies to gain competitive advantage, provided that the network is actively coordinated and managed. For this purpose, cluster initiatives aiming at delivering potentials for success for their members arouse in many regions in previous years. Based on literature, this article analyzes the different stages of development of a cluster initiative and the specific tasks of the cluster management in these stages. Applying the relational and the resource-based view, we explain possible company’s competitive advantages resulting from cooperation. Subsequently, we distinguish each stage and describe the specific tasks of the different protagonists of a cluster. Finally, we discuss these theoretic findings of how to develop cluster initiatives and their applicability by a case study of the HESSENMETALL Cluster Initiative and derive implications for science and management.