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This chain is basically international and its
management includes such dimensions as technical
specifications, concurrent engineering, strategic
engineering alliances, quality control and
product(Niosi and Zhegu, 2005).
3.3 Anchor Tenant Concept
The classic anchor tenant is the large department
store in a retail shopping mall that creates demand
externalities for the other shops. (Agrawal and
Cockburn, 2003) apply the approach to large firms
within clusters, defining anchor tenant as a large
firm that is: (1) heavily engaged in R&D in general
and (2) has at least minor absorptive capacity in a
particular technology within a particular region.
Anchor tenants can be very important in both
creating and capturing externalities within local
innovation systems, are likely to be important in
stimulating both the demand and supply sides of
local markets for innovation and may be an
important channel for transmission of spill overs
(Baglieri et al., 2012). One important factor appears
to be the role of universities as sources of research
spill overs. As academic and industrial research
interests have converged in areas such as computer
science, electrical engineering and biotechnology, it
has become clear that university research plays a key
role in regional innovation performance. Second,
anchor tenants must be large firms. This makes them
likely to be large, direct consumers of university
research, but above and beyond this, their size may
have important indirect effects. Third, the anchor
tenant may also indirectly stimulate innovative
activity by enhancing both the supply and demand
sides of the market for new technologies. Anchor
tenants create externalities by thickening markets
and stimulating demand. They capture externalities
by directly and indirectly increasing the absorptive
capacity of the region for early-stage university-
based research (Agrawal and Cockburn, 2002).
3.4 Research Questions and
Hypotheses
Based on the discussion of the previous sections and
the work of Martinez (Romero, 2011a); (Romero,
2011b) on Mexican aerospace’s context, we propose
empirical hypotheses regarding the questions posed
in the introduction section.
Question 1: What are the main reasons for
aerospace firms for migrating to Morocco, and how
they overcome limitations of the local environment,
which has a nascent aerospace industrial
infrastructure?
Hypothesis 1a: Stringent quality and safety
standards required for aerospace activities, including
manufacturing, firms are likely to require external
technical assistance at one point. Due to the
limitations of the Moroccan system, the more likely
source of this firm-external knowledge would be
located abroad.
Hypothesis 1b: Even though manufacturing is the
more likely activity to be transferred, some sort of
innovation will certainly be introduced at the firm
and country level, innovation at the world level will
be almost non-existent in the short and medium run.
Question 2: Do Moroccan aerospace sector presents
similar centripetal forces found in other well-known
aerospace clusters or sectors to maintain Moroccan
competitiveness in term of attracting and retaining
aerospace companies?
Hypothesis 2: Attraction forces are related with low
cost operations and the manufacturing capability of
the country. (Industrial infrastructure, the skilled
labour force, the low operation costs...Etc)
Question 3: Are there firms that might be
considered Anchor Tenants?
Hypothesis 3: Since no substantial R&D activity is
expected, it is unlikely to find an anchor tenant firm.
Question 4: Does Moroccan government policy
towards the sector, proposes similar measures taken
by other successful countries?
Hypothesis 4: The measures taken by Moroccan
government toward the sector through «National
Pact for Industrial Emergence» have encourages
foreign firms to take the risks to transfer more
complex activities to their subsidiaries in Morocco.
4 EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
4.1 Data
Given the small size of Moroccan aerospace firms,
the sampling method used is the exhaustive list. It
consists of querying all the individuals in the
population studied. The Moroccan aerospace
industries association (GIMAS, 2013) list includes
almost the majority of companies operating in the
aerospace industry in morocco. The targeted
population as a basis for this research includes 107
companies. However, companies operating in the air
service, trade service or are only a commercial
representations of their main companies were
excluded because they present no interest in our
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