Imitation Networks and Organizational Survival in the Portuguese Industry

This paper aims at evaluate the impact of imitation networks on organizations´ survival rates within a Portuguese industrial cluster. We used a multi-agent framework to represent the industrial cluster, its firms and the rules underlying the imitation strategies. Several experiments were based on the density dependence model, where vital rates are related with the size of the population (population density). We have concluded that imitation seems to improve the vital dynamics of the population and that present information about a firm is enough to establish an imitation network