Analysis of cooperation, learning and innovation practices in the LPA of mining and metallurgy of aluminum in Barcarena (Pará State, Brazil)

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the intensity of cooperative and innovative practices developed by companies of the productive arrangement established in Barcarena city, in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. Its theoretical foundation is based on the concepts of the evolutionary economics approach, which relates the development process with the generation and dissemination of technological innovations, which are provided by favorable conditions offered by corporate agglomerations and are potentiated by synergistic effects of the geographic concentration of productive and institutional agents. The research field was composed of 68 companies in the network of suppliers of central enterprises of this cluster, and the analysis was performed with the use of descriptive and multivariate statistical techniques. The results of the exploratory factor analysis show that business practices include four latent factors, called “Cooperation”, “Learning”, “Training” and “Innovation” and the analysis of the factor scores indicates that the factor “Learning” had the best outcome among the companies, with index 0.522, while the factor “Cooperation” got the worst result, with index 0.136.

Key words: cooperation, learning, innovation, clusters, local productive arrangements (LPA).