Cognitive Identity and Social Reflexivity of the Industrial District Firms : Going beyond the "Complexity Effect" with an Agent-based Computational Prototype

Industrial districts (IDs) are complex inter-organizational systems based on an evolutionary network of interactions among heterogeneous, localized, functionally integrated and complementary firms. With an agent-based prototype, we explore how cognitive processes and social reflexivity dynamics of ID firms affect technological adaptation and economic performance of ID as a whole. Rather than observing IDs just by the point of view of the so-called bottom-up emerging properties, we try to study how firms develop over time “districtualized” behavioral attitudes, through cognitive capabilities of typifying and contextualizing in a social sense their technological, organizational and economic action. The question is: do cognitive processes, like those mentioned, have a great impact on technological learning and economic performance of firms over time?