Locational behaviour and cluster structures of the ship building industry, the case of Tuzla shipyards cluster

Industrial clusters has always been among the most popular and central themes in the literature of economic geography, management and planning. Since Alfred Marshall?s writings in the late 19 century, clustering literature has grown rapidly and become voluminous with the contributions from various disciplines. Undoubtedly, more empirical evidence from relatively less explored localities and sectors will improve the present understanding of clustering. This thesis, therefore, investigates the locational behaviour of the ship building industry in Turkey. It the analyses the structure of Tuzla Shipyards Cluster (TSC) by conducting a comparative study based on two case studies (1) a large scale ship manufacturer (2) a small scale producer specialised on wooden sailing boats. The main focus of the empirical research is to understand the organisational and locational structure of supplier customer relationship networks in Tuzla and analyse the agglomerative forces of TSC.