Re-Bundling and the Development of Hollow Clusters in the East German Chemical Industry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
After the reunification, drastic economic restructuring processes occurred in East Germany due to a double transition: the transformation of the political and economic system, and the Fordist crisis associated with ongoing globalization processes. The challenges and shifts were particularly strong in the chemical industry, which had developed a structure of mass production characterized by an unsustainable exploitation of natural and economic resources. Drawing on a conception that views transformation and restructuring as a process of regional ruptures and re-bundling, rather than one that focuses on the lock-in of old industrialized regions, this article investigates the extent to which restructuring activities have been able to generate self-sustaining regional economies and networks in the East German chemical industry.The article is based on empirical research conducted in the regions of Leuna, Schkopau and Bitterfeld-Wolfen, which provides evidence that restructuring in the chemical industry did not create fully fledged clusters with strong interfirm linkages.Although the regional economies of the East German chemical industry were well linked to West Germany and to international markets through corporate ties, networks for learning and innovation remained weak.The development of these ‘hollow clusters’ was due to the persistence of a small industry basis, the dominance of branch operations with few local ties, and the limited importance of start-up firms. Such conditions, consequently, limit the prospects for growth in the East German chemical industry, suggesting that more diversified regional policies must be developed in the future.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".