The effects of top management qualifications to the cluster strategies: Case of Afyonkarahisar in marble industry

With the increase of the globalization trends in last thirty years in the world, the businesses have to plan and perform their activities towards world trends. This development has lead to the fierce competition. The businesses are in a struggle for gaining competitive advantage in world markets by providing convenient inputs and decreasing costs for outclassing in competition. The most important element in this process is seen as developing cooperation among the businesses. One of the models for developing cooperation among businesses is clustering. Being in cluster and forming clusters are important strategic decisions that affect future of business. For that reason, this kind of decisions are taken and practiced by top managers who have a say in the management in businesses. The qualification of top managers influences the decisions regarding to clustering strategy significantly as well as influences all of the decisions of the business. In the application part of the study, an empirical research is done in order to find out the effects of characteristics of the top managers which operate in marble industry in Afyonkarahisar on choosing clustering strategy. Thus, it is confirmed that businesses are in a mass which creates the structure of clustering. The importance of the qualification of the top managers of the businesses in the industry towards clustering strategy and the importance of these qualifications in choosing clustering strategy are presented.