Inter-firm cooperation and local industrial ecology processes: evidence from three French case studies

In this paper, we are interested in industrial and territorial ecology (ITE), whose aim is to optimize the management of material and energy flows between local economic players by drawing inspiration from the cyclical nature of natural ecosystems. The organizational elements, specifically the forms of coordination between actors, appear to be central in the setting out of these processes. This is why methodological devices promise to respond to the chronic difficulty of implementing local inter-firm relations conducive to cooperation. The work presented here, based on social network analysis, aims to determine their validity through three case studies. First, we examine the need to consider the spatial dimension of ITE approaches to understand the conditions for the emergence of inter-firm cooperation and sustainable development, and we present the methodological elements of our work. Then, we proceed to the case studies and identify inter-firm relations and study their evolution over time. We conclude with an assessment of the devices studied, the intermediary role of facilitators, and the difficulty of perpetuating these types of cooperative relations, which raises serious questions about the modalities of the implementation of sustainable territorial development processes.