Comparative Wood Cluster Mapping With A Special Focus On The Wood Clusters In Eastern Croatia

Over the last two decades Croatia’s wood industry has recorded mostly negative trends reflected in an unfavorable structure of production (dominated by primary products), the decline in employment and unfavorable foreign trade balance for furniture products, as one of the highest value-adding products. In order to reverse the negative trends various forms of association in the wood industry have been proposed to propel growth of this important economic sector. In the last fifteen years in Croatia a significant interest has been dedicated to strategic alliances. Policymakers believe there is a great potential in clusters. The wood industry has been identified as one of the key strategic industries; different activities have been developed and a number of measures have been adopted by the Government to support the establishment of clusters. So today we have as many as 12 active clusters, which can be divided into two groups: operational clusters and clusters that represent advisory bodies and as such have no productive function. The main objective of this paper is the presentation of mapping of clusters in Croatia’s wood industry with a specific purpose of assessing clusters from the eastern part of Croatia (Wood Cluster of Vukovar-Srijem County, and Wood Cluster of Slavonia). If we compare the findings of our research with data obtained by the relevant international institutions, it follows that most of the clusters in Croatia do not have the required characteristics for mapping which makes their statistical monitoring and eventually management difficult. The paper includes an example of managing operational cluster in Austria with the aim to highlight the possibilities and benefits which can be achieved by clustering. For the purpose of this paper the method of deck research was used. All relevant scientific and professional papers by domestic and foreign authors related to the research topic were studied. The results were interpreted by using the methods of comparative analysis, compilation, description, classification, inductive and deductive analysis and case study method. The aim of this research is to compare strategic management of wood clusters in Croatia with successful wood clusters in European union (Austria).