Cooperation among Small-scale Enterprises in the Automobile Repair Industry in Urban Ghana: Information Search and Bricolage from the Perspective of Auto Mechanics

Abstract

Cooperation among small-scale enterprises within and beyond an industrial area has drawn attention in economics and geography for its capacity to facilitate industrial development and innovation. The description of cooperation among such enterprises inside an industrial area largely depends on models based on industrial areas in developed countries such as Italy, where scholars emphasize the unity of community within the industrial area as a driving force for cooperation. Some industrial areas in urban Ghana, however, have a history of forced relocation and subsequent settlement of new enterprises. These conditions hinder the formation of communal identity. This article ethnographically elucidates the relations between different actors in the automobile repair industry in Ghana from the perspectives of auto mechanics (fitters) and attempts to examine the situation in which cooperation among them occurs. It was found that while most repair jobs are done by replacing parts and using the related services of different artisans, problems occur when fitters are unable to find shops to go to or parts to buy, or when they find the spare parts they have purchased do not fit. Fitters overcome these problems by seeking information from people around them and by making bricolage adjustments of spare parts with nearby artisans. From these findings, I argue that their cooperation is not based on communal relations but induced by the uncertainty of information within the industrial area, which should rather be considered as a “bazaar.”