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Industrial clusters have been considered a successful form of firms’ organisation, and an instrument for increasing the competitiveness and growth of the region and firms’ performance (Aranguren et al., 2013; Abdesslem & Chiappini, 2016; Stojčić et al., 2019; Pecze, 2019). The idea behind cluster formation and its promotion is that firms benefit from agglomeration effects due to knowledge and technology spillovers, input and output sharing, and location externalities (Maffioli et al., 2016). Cluster organisations should facilitate collaboration among firms, scientific and public actors, networking, inter-firm linkages, sharing of information, resources, and knowledge to build new growth opportunities, and overcome coordination failures (Maffioli et al., 2016). Past research has examined the impact of clusters on firm performance in various industries and the wood industry as well, indicating that cluster membership has a positive impact on firms’ survival, innovation activities and performance – exports, productivity, and sales (e.g., Strøjer et al., 2003; Tödtling & Trippl, 2004; Wennberg & Lindqvist, 2008; Eisingerich et al., 2010; Abdesslem & Chiappini, 2016; Stojčić et al., 2019).

For the last years, global competition has strengthened the significance of a company’s ability to introduce new products, while responding to increasingly dynamic markets with customers rapidly changing needs, and thus claiming for shortening the time required to design, develop and manufacture, as well as for cost reduction, increased reliability, quality improvement and sustainability. In this context, firms are implementing a wide variety of different techniques, management processes and development strategies in their quest for shorter development cycles and permanent business alignment with the market requirements (Cunha & Putnik, 2006).

In conditions of globalization it is also important to take into consideration to which extent the subsidiaries and the transnational corporation in general are capable of increasing the value under existing parameters (organizational structure, production capacity, quality of the manufactured product), i.e. what internal and external factors mainly influence the forming of the market value of the whole holding structure.