Internationalisation : threat or opportunity for the survival of the Italian district model?

National borders in Europe have been opening since 1992 and the Union is expanding to embrace more countries prompting enterprises to consider alternative and more attractive locations outside their home country to handle part of their activities (Van Dijk and Pellenbarg, 2000; Cantwell and Iammarino, 2002). International relocation is becoming more and more popular even for small and medium-sized firms that are involved in a growing internationalisation process, mirroring the path of multinational enterprises. Italy, like other industrialised countries, is experiencing a fragmentation of the production chain: firms tend to shift high labour-intensive manufacturing activities to areas characterised by an abundance of low-cost labour (i.e. Central Eastern Europe, India, South East Asia, Latin America, Russia and Central Asia). The internationalisation process by Italian district SMEs has assumed significant dimensions. It has become a relevant topic in recent economic debate because of its consequences for the local context and, in particular, the implication for the survival of the Italian district model (see, among others, Becattini, 2002; Rullani, 1998 and Cor, 2000). The purpose of the paper is twofold: it aims at (i) identifying the managerial approaches to the internationalisation process adopted by the Italian district SMEs and by the Industrial District (ID) itself and (ii) at investigating whether the international delocalisation to the South Eastern European countries (SEECs) constitutes a threat or an opportunity for the Italian district model. The paper is organised as follows. The general introduction is followed by a description of the evolution of the internationalisation processes in Italy over the last three decades. Section three presents a discussion of the internationalisation strategies adopted by Italian SMEs. Section four focuses on the internationalisation process of the Italian industrial districts SMEs. A review of the studies on the subject is offered in section five. Section six presents a qualitative study on the internationalisation process as undergone by sports shoes manufacturers in the Montebelluna district, in north-east Italy. This study shows different managerial strategies to the internationalisation process and emphasises that the motivations can evolve over time, from originally cost-saving to increasingly market-oriented or global strategies. On the basis of a literature review, section seven investigates whether internationalisation constitutes a threat (i.e. loss of jobs and knowledge) or an opportunity (i.e. enlargement of the ID, update district s competitiveness) for the district model. Finally, some summarising remarks in section eight conclude the paper

Firm migration patterns in in the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom. An end of twenty calm years of geographical interest

Firm migration in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom Cees-Jan Pen and Ilaria Mariotti In the 1970s firm migration was an important research topic in West European economic geography. Especially in the United Kingdom, but also in the Netherlands, Germany and France many migration studies are published. This paper describes a selection of these studies and proves the importance of this topic. These studies focused on assisting the in that time popular regional economic policy to support peripheral or old industrial areas by stimulating firms to move to these areas. It appeared that these policies were not very effective and the policy interest shifted to assist firms, which are located in these problem regions. Furthermore, especially in the United Kingdom the liberal policy of the Thatcher government aims at declining the governmental influence on for example firms. In a theoretical sense these policy oriented so-called behavioural firm migration studies are regarded as a repetition of (check)lists of push, pull and keep factors and interesting comments from time to time. This meant that the research interest focused on new theoretical approaches, which dealt with other themes. Since that time economic geographers regard behavioural firm migration research as a peripheral research theme, which results in hardly any theoretical contribution. So in a policy and in a scientific sense, it appears that since the 1980s the migration of firms is an insignificant topic. This implies that few studies are published and the insignificance also meant that no overview exists of the current state of the art. In a more theoretical sense, one of the authors found during the writing of his thesis international examples of a revival of the behavioural location theory and the connected firm migration research. We found signals, besides some examples of the classic interest in regional economic policy, that most of these migration studies focused on the suburbanisation of firms or in a more broad sense the urban spill-over. At the moment, this urban spill-over is an important policy topic, which pleas for data to ground this phenomenon and possibly also the significance of more long distance migration. We selected the Netherlands and the United Kingdom because these two countries produced most migration studies in Europe. Based on data of the English CREDO-database, we describe the importance and pattern of the migration of head offices in the period 1988-2000 for the United Kingdom. For the Netherlands we could only use firm migration data from 1986 until 1995. These figures are published by Kemper and Pellenbarg and are based on the so-called Mutation balance of the Chambers of Commerce. The paper mainly focuses on the comparison of firm migration process between the two countries in two different years: the 1995 for the Netherlands and the 1999 for the UK. The main results can be briefly described below. In the Netherlands 7,9% of all firms registered by the Chambers of Commerce have moved in 1995. The migration process involved 180,000 jobs. On the other hand, in the United Kingdom 3% of the business population have moved in 1999 and the amount of jobs involved was about 2,164,027. In addition, the business services are the most mobile sectors in both the countries, followed by the wholesale in the Netherlands and by the financial sector in the UK. Finally, the greater part of the firm migrations are short distance movements.

Transport and Logistics in a globalizing world. A focus on Italy.

open1Mariotti, IlariaMariotti, Ilari

The indirect effects of manufacturing internationalization on logistics - Evidence from the Italian districts

The aim of the paper is to investigate the indirect impact of internationalisation process, undertaken by the district firms located in Veneto region (north-eastern Italy), on the logistics’ employment change within the same industrial districts. The results of the empirical analysis have showed that within the districts there is not a clear positive relationship between internationalisation and the employment growth in the logistics sector. This might be due, either to a strong insourcing of logistics activities by district firms, or to a trend of outsourcing such activities to logistics suppliers located outside the industrial districts. The paper is organised into five sections. An introduction is followed by a literary review on the direct and indirect effects of manufacturing internationalisation on the home country, with a specific focus on logistics. The sample and the methodology are described in section three, section four presents the empirical results. Conclusions and further research questions follow.internationalisation, industrial districts, logistics sector, indirect effects.

Does the logistics sector gain from manufacturing internationalisation? An empirical investigation on the Italian case

The present paper deals with the impact of manufacturing internationalisation, in the forms of international trade, cooperation agreement and FDI, on the logistics sector. Some descriptive statistics are provided for the Italian macro-areas and the logistics employment and an econometric analysis is carried out at the "regional-industry" level (20 NUTS2 regions and 11 logistics sub-sectors) with reference to the Italian case in the period 1996-2001. Results show that export and FDIs positively affect the logistics employment variation in 1996-2001, while import and cooperation agreements display a negative or not significant impact.logistics, employment, internationalisation, trade, FDI, cooperation agreement.

The firm relocation decision: a logit model

This paper deals with the relocation of firms. There are indications from former research, that age, size and market are determinants of relocated companies. This paper aims to demonstrate that mobile firms are younger, more export oriented and more rapidly growing. With the use of two theories, Location theory and the theory of Organisational Ecology, it is tried to construct a theoretical background for an age-related bias in the decision to relocate. Location theorieexplain from different perspectives the location of economic activities. Spatial movements of firms represent only a small part of industrial change, but it does influence the overall change of production and employment levels. Organisational Ecology deals with the causes of vital events (birth, death and mobility) of firms in the organisational population, because mobility is one of the visible outcomes of the selection process. The theoretical constructs for this decision are tested with the use of the Cranet database that provides information on company relocation in eighteen European countries in 1996-1999. First, a general analysis of the phenomenon in the European countries is presented. Second, the connection between relocation and age, size and market of companies in three example countries (Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) is described on the basis of the literary review. The findings are in general that when firms grow older they are too large and too embedded in the spatial environment to move. Younger firms are more likely to relocate, because they are expected to have higher growth rates and therefore need more space, one incentive to relocate.

Las misiones científicas y el acrecentamiento de los fondos del Museo Arqueológico Nacional: la estancia de la Fragata Arapiles en Italia

In the last decades, many projects of urban development, following the principles of sustainability, have been realized in Europe. Specifically, it has been demonstrated that sustainable strategies can have significant results if they are carried on at neighbourhood level. When adopting a SM strategy, a large number of stakeholders is affected by its impacts and many conflicts could easily arise. Therefore, participation plays a crucial role, firstly, because it is the most effective means to gain, deliver and sustain benefits deriving i.e. from SM interventions; secondly because some tendency for individuals is proved in adjusting their preferences to the average of the social group they belong to, thus sparking off a virtuous circle towards SM. Within this context, the present paper analyses a panel of 37 European neighbourhoods, which are considered best practices for sustainability, in order to evaluate their SM strategies, and specifically investigate the role played by participation and collective actions in enhancing and achieving SM. To do so, specific SM strategies and related indicators have been identified, according to two previous papers written by the authors (Maltese et al., 2011; Bolchi et al., 2011), and an empirical investigation on the SM strategies is presented. In particular, the empirical analysis underlines the role played by participation in enhancing SM and the commonalities and differences among the neighbourhoods.In questo articolo sono analizzate le strategie di mobilità sostenibile di alcune best practices di sostenibilità, italiane ed europee, a scala di quartiere.Lo scopo è evidenziare quanto siano presenti e significative le iniziative compartecipate – sotto forma di partnership più o meno strutturate tra pubblico e privato o semplicemente di condivisione di intenti – per il raggiungimento di livelli elevati di sostenibilità. L’accesso e la partecipazione dei diversi stakeholders ai processi decisionali e di valutazione, infatti, contribuisce, da un lato, ad una migliore conoscenza degli obiettivi, dall’altro, ad una riduzione del grado di conflitto.L’analisi si concentra sulla valutazione del grado di mobilità sostenibile di 37 quartieri europei a partire da indicatori e criteri mutuati dalla letteratura; in particolare, i modelli di riferimento sono l’Esagono di Nijkamp, approntato per la valutazione ex-post della sostenibilità a scala urbana (Nijkamp, 1993) e di quartiere (Cerreta e Salzano, 2009) e il modello di Holden (2007), più specificamente focalizzato sulle leve di intervento per il raggiungimento della mobilità sostenibile.Inoltre, sei casi - studio verranno approfonditi, allo scopo di valutare l’impatto della partecipazione sul grado di mobilità sostenibile a scala di quartiere.L’articolo è strutturato come segue: l’introduzione è seguita da una breve rassegna della letteratura e dalla descrizione della metodologia utilizzata. Sono poi presentati alcuni risultati derivati dalla elaborazione dei dati e l’approfondimento sui sei casi – studio. Seguono, infine, le conclusioni

Logistics FDI in Italy: integration strategies and motivations

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