Exit, Voice, And Loyalty In The Industrial District: The Case Of Prato

In this paper the "exit, voice and loyalty" approach by Albert O. Hirschman is applied to the case of the rise and evolution of the Prato industrial district, from post-war days until now. This is done, not so much to gain a better understanding of the specific events in Prato, but rather to shed light on the recuperation mechanisms that characterise the fundamental economic relations within the industrial district: i.e. labour relations, subcontracting relations, and relations between firms. The analysis shows how the higher competitiveness and adaptability of the district derives from the relative abundance of exit mechanisms, but also from the wealth of forms of voice, both individual and collective. These are continually being renewed within the district, thus bringing about an alternation and recombination of the mix of exit and voice, and also of the interaction models between them. The wealth of expressions of voice is a distinctive element of district relations which is linked to the multiplicity of loyalty relations (team attachment, professional category membership, local community sense of membership...) existing within the district.exit and voice, industrial district

What makes SMEs more likely to collaborate? Analysing the role of regional policy

The last twenty years have witnessed the diffusion of regional innovation policies supporting networks of innovators. The underlying aim of these policies is to encourage firms, particularly SMEs, to undertake collaborations with organisations possessing complementary knowledge. Focusing on a set of SMEs that have participated, over time, in several innovation networks funded by the same regional government, the paper investigates how their relationships have evolved with respect to the following aspects: (i) reiteration of pre-existing relationships as opposed to experimentation of new relationships; (ii) collaboration with organisations possessing complementary rather than similar knowledge and competencies; (iii) creation of local relationships rather than experimentation of extra-local collaborations; (iv) reliance upon intermediaries to connect with other organisations. Our findings reveal that the involvement in these policy-supported networks changed the firms’ relational patterns, leading them to collaborate with a wider variety of agents than those with whom they were linked before the policies. Sectoral heterogeneity had a negative effect on the probability to collaborate, while co-localisation increased the likelihood to collaborate. Mutual involvement with intermediaries also had a positive effect. However, in the case of firm-to-university relationships only specialized intermediaries were likely to perform a positive role and, therefore, encourage networking

The Triple Helix in the context of global change: dynamics and challenges

Understanding how economies change through interactions with science and government as different spheres of activity requires both new conceptual tools and methodologies. In this paper, the evolution of the metaphor of a Triple Helix of university–industry–government relations is elaborated into an evolutionary model, and positioned within the context of global economic changes. We highlight how Triple Helix relations are both continuing and mutating, and the conditions under which a Triple Helix might be seen to be unraveling in the face of pressures on each of the three helices – university, industry, and government. The reciprocal dynamics of innovation both in the Triple Helix thesis and in the global economy are empirically explored: we find that footlooseness of high technology manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services counteract the embeddedness prevailing in medium technology manufacturing. The geographical level at which synergy in Triple Helix relations can be expected and sustained varies among nations and regions

Prato: The Social Construction of an Industrial City Facing Processes of Cultural Hybridization

This chapter deals with a widely studied case, that is, Prato, a middle-sized city with rooted industrial traditions, in the Centre of Italy. Prato is a textile industrial district embedded in the so-called Third Italy—an area characterized by the presence of small firms spread throughout the territory, linked together in supply and subcontracting relationships—which, in the last twenty years, has undergone a profound transformation as a consequence of the crisis of textile and immigration, leading to the formation of a large Chinese community. The related changes brought with them problems of social cohesion and sustainable development. The authors address these issues by analyzing both academic and public discourses on Prato. Their basic idea is that common stereotypes act as drivers of a public discourse that prevents the city to re-negotiate its identity. The analysis concludes that different forms of hybridization—particularly cultural hybridization—are occurring, which would need further investigations

The Role of Agglomeration and Technology in Shaping Firm Strategy and Organization

Over the last few years a growing number of contributions have shown that the presence of business groups, i.e. sets of firms legally distinct but belonging to the same owner(s), is significant. From a theoretical point of view, this presence poses the question of whether the group or the single legal unit should be considered as the elementary unit in economic analysis: i.e., what is generally meant in microeconomic theory by firm. In this paper we consider the group as the appropriate unit to delimit the firms boundary, i.e. as the observed organizational form adopted by firms when they grow in size. Starting from this hypothesis, the main aim of this paper is to analyse the role of structural variables, such as spatial agglomeration and technology, in determining some features of business groups strategy and organization. Specifically, the analysis concerns the presence and organizational specificity of business groups based on their membership of industrial districts (as a proxy for spatial agglomeration) and to the role of spatial agglomeration and technology in vertical integration strategies. To conduct the analysis, we take advantage of a new and large data-set at firm and business group level, recently developed by ISTAT (the Italian National Statistical Institute). The data-set, referring to 2001, covers all manufacturing firms organized as joint-stock companies

Distretti industriali italiani e doppia sfida cinese

<em>Italian Industrial Districts and the Twofold Chinese Challenge</em> - In recent decades Italy has seen large-scale inflows of immigrants from the less developed countries, including China. The paper focuses on Chinese immigrants in Italy’s fashion districts. Starting from the industrial district literature, and in particular the specific features of the district model, the causes and possible economic and social consequences of the emergence of an ethnic economy in Italian districts are analysed. General indications for intervention to transform the present challenges into opportunities for new local development in the context of the global economy conclude the paper.