Special Issue Uncovering business and spatial dimensions of industrial districts, clusters and learning regions

The article analyzes the trajectory of industrial districts in recent decades, outlining the main lines of research and their advances, as well as the key work of Dr. Fiorenza Belussi.

Recently, scholars have begun to show a reorientation of the Marshallian Industrial District (MDI) framework towards addressing topics that were not central to the mainstream, such as multinationals and their different sub-lines of research. In this study, we reflect on multinationals and their challenge to the established MID boundaries. By reviewing literature, we elaborate on, integrate and discuss types and effects of multinationals in districts, highlighting a new type of actor that has recently become more prominent: multinational private equity funds in MIDs. We elaborate on different types of multinationals in MIDs, reviewing and integrating extant evidence about private equity funds as new established realities. The study proposes new sub-lines of inquiry to extend and strenghten the MID framework.

In this paper, we examine tax haven clusters considering them as diverse but recognizable examples of about fifty phenomena worldwide rarely studied from an economic geography perspective. Three canonical but diverse examples of tax haven clusters are used for the analysis: Wilmington in Delaware (United States), Ireland (European Union), and Gibraltar (former European Union, now post-Brexit British Overseas Territory). The objects of study are not treated as being almost perfect expressions of the classical, canonical cluster configuration. On the contrary, we focus on the ‘agentic’ impulses of ‘desire’ motivating human action and use ‘pattern recognition’ to identify the features explaining these clusters and the ‘agentic’ actors motivating them. It is concluded that the characteristics of this type of clusters – tax haven clusters – require more recognition of the interactive and often innovative communication networks through which cluster members interact globally, given they exist within a global system akin to an ‘assemblage’. Unlike other types of clusters, we confirm their extreme dependence on the legislation on which they are based as well as their fragility in the face of legislative changes imposed from the outside.

Environmental sustainability impacts on industrial districts and their lifecycle evolutionary processes. Nevertheless, research in this direction is scant, suggesting on the one hand, the role of lead firms of global value chains and, on the other hand, potential contributions of suppliers. The paper explores how district firms have invested in sustainability by analyzing sustainable-oriented communication strategies (certification, web, exhibitions) of Italian leather and jewelry clusters. Results show that districts are evolving by including sustainability in their strategies. A variety of sustainability strategies emerge among district firms, with differences also between firms in B2B and B2C markets.

This study examines innovation as a shock reaction in the process of regional economic resilience, focusing on a footwear industrial district in southern Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that innovation, a mechanism of adaptability, emerged in the industrial district not only to support economic recovery, but also to mitigate the adverse effects. Firms implemented novel marketing and sales processes, and some also had to change their information and communication systems or organisational structure to support e-commerce. As such, this study highlights the influence of adaptability on economic resistance.

Drawing inspiration from the works of Fiorenza Belussi on multiple paths of development in local productive systems, the essay contributes to the ongoing debate on factors facilitating such transformations, focusing primarily on industrial districts (IDs) as open learning systems. With specific reference to the Italian context, this paper recalls the delicate balance between socio-cultural and economic elements within IDs transitioning towards new paths of development, crucial for facing the current technological and societal challenges. The essay proposes to look at the possible diffusion of humanistic management (HM) and cultural enhancement of economic strategies, as new triggering factors against lock-in conditions and tendencies toward degradation during phases of ID transformation. HM prioritizes the well-being of individuals and ethical decision-making, aligning with a broader societal purpose. Cultural enhancement, rooted in a common heritage, supports place identity, and suggests bases for multiple specializations. The convergence of HM and cultural enhancement within IDs may offer to renewed place-leaderships levers for strategies of transition pointing to sustainable paths that align with broader societal goals in an era of disrupting challenges.

Over the past fifteen years, several studies have used the organizational theory of paradoxes to understand some typical organizational tensions, including that between global and local dimensions typically faced by multinational corporations. These studies analyze paradoxical tensions at the organizational or even intra-organizational level, while the paradox lens has not yet been applied to study systems such as industrial districts. This paper attempts to do so by analyzing and comparing the local/global paradox in multinational corporations and industrial districts. For the latter, the analysis rests on some empirical studies conducted on Italian districts. Moreover, as the presence of multinationals in these districts has become stronger in the recent phase, an attempt has been made to understand if and how this phenomenon impacts the local/global tension at the district level.

In this letter, we reflect on recent modifications of the regional innovation system (RIS) approach that have been prompted by persistent environmental, social, and economic problems. Scholars have begun to advocate a reorientation of the RIS framework towards addressing territorial sustainability challenges and have introduced the notion of challenge-oriented regional innovation systems (CORIS). While the CORIS approach holds promise given the challenges of our time, several unresolved issues remain. We elaborate on and discuss three themes that demand further research. Firstly, there is a need for in-depth studies of the geographies of problems. Systematic analyses of the origins and interrelations of territorial challenges are high in demand. Secondly, the geographies of challenge-oriented innovation-exnovation dynamics warrant more attention. We argue that future research should delve into questions around the development, testing and upscaling of innovative solutions, as well as the unlocking and destabilisation of unsustainable practices in various spatial contexts. Lastly, we contend that a better understanding of the geographies of RIS reconfiguration is necessary. This entails shedding light on various forms of system-level agency involved in reorienting or transforming historically-grown real-world RIS in different types of regions.

Sustainability issues are increasingly influencing firms’ decision making, leading to the creation of new business models for finding solutions to environmental and societal challenges. This work aims to explore what is the role played by industrial districts in firms’ orientation towards sustainability. It implements a Propensity Score Matching technique on a novel datatabase with information on 1300 Italian fashion firms. Their sustainability orientation is measured using the Quantitas Intelligent Business Analyzer (QIBA), an original Natural Language Processing-based data mining technique, which allows scraping firms’ websites and analyzing their content adopting a Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency weighting scheme. Findings suggest the existence of a sustainability-driven industrial district effect, i.e. a positive association between the sustainability orientation of fashion firms and their localization in industrial districts.

We have now entered a post-neoliberal era, characterised by deglobalisation and reindustrialisation to obtain resilience and security in value chains and increase manufacturing capacity in Europe and the US.

Europe has not to the same extent suffered from deindustrialisation as the US. Typical examples of the industrial structure in Europe are the ’hidden champions’ of Germany and the industrial districts of the Third Italy. The industrial districts have been exposed to globalisation, resulting in the brake up of the original complete regional value chains through outsourcing in some sectors. However, in general the industrial districts have been surprisingly resilient during the 40 years period of neo-liberalist globalisation illustrating the ‘many possible world view’ of Sabel and Zeitlin (1985). In this contribution we ask what will the new tendencies of deglobalisation, regionalisation and Industry 4.0 digital technology mean for the future of the industrial district model? Will it imply a strengthening of the original form of industrial districts so that this model of (re)industrialisation once again takes on a position as a role model for developed economies. The intention of this letter is to introduce a discussion about this fascinating topic.