Resumen

DIEZ, José Ignacio  y  PONG, Claudia. Institutional networks and economic development in small cities: the cases of General Acha and Pigüé (Argentina). Rev. Pilquen. secc. cienc. soc. [online]. 2021, vol.24, n.1, pp.48-69. ISSN 1851-3123.

This paper analyzes the dynamics of the institutional system in the cities of General Acha (Province of La Pampa-Argentina) and Pigüé (Province of Buenos Aires-Argentina), trying to understand how those organizational networks can support local innovation and economic development. The main objective of this research is to know the degree and type of communication between organizations in each city. This work also tries to discover central actors in those networks that can promote the local economy and complimentary relationships between the different types of agents. The information for this study was obtained using semi-structured interviews that were made to the main authorities of the relevant institutions in General Acha and Pigüé. In the case of General Acha, a total of eleven organizations were interviewed while for Pigüé a total of sixteen institutions were considered. The gathered data was processed using social network analysis. As a result of this paper, it is observed that the institutions of General Acha and Pigüé have difficulties to communicate in a satisfactory way. According to the information provided by the interviews, only 35% of the possible communications are present in General Acha, while in Pigüé there are 48% of communications ties. Thus, the density of communications is low in the two cities and there are important structural holes in both networks. These limitations in the processes of exchanging knowledge and information are translated into a poor number of joint projects, only five in General Acha and nineteen in Pigüé. In addition, there are a significant number of entities in each city that argue that they do not develop any collaborative initiative with other organizations. Based on these results, it can be ensured that the impact of the institutional systems on the economic development of both territories is not very significant.

Palabras clave : Networks; Territorial Development; Organizations.

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