Inter-organizational relationships with core and peripheral partners in heritage tourism clusters: Divergent effects on innovation

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the effects of inter-organizational relationships with core and peripheral partners on innovation in heritage tourism clusters. Design/methodology/approach The empirical analysis uses original data (collected by means of a postal questionnaire) based at UNESCO World Heritage Cities in Spain. The sample consists of 215 companies, and the methodology used is hierarchical linear regression. Findings The authors identify divergent effects of relationships with core and peripheral partners on innovation. In particular, the effect of core partners has an inverted U-shaped form, while that of peripheral partners is U-shaped. Research limitations/implications The results may be extrapolated to other heritage tourism clusters located in World Heritage Cities with some precaution. The paper does not jointly analyze the effects of relationships with core and peripheral partners on the innovation of firms in tourism clusters. Practical/implications Clustered tourism firms should not rely only on relationships with core agents, because beyond a critical threshold, returns in terms of innovation diminish. Firms should strive to establish relationships with peripheral agents in spite of the initial difficulties and the costs associated with network building, because positive returns soon materialize. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature on inter-organizational relationships by analyzing the impact of relationships with core and peripheral partners on innovation in clustered firms. The authors highlight the existence of the divergent curvilinear effects of these relationships on heritage tourism clusters.