The debate about the industrial districts of central and north-eastern Italy has evolved over the last 25 years. Initially, many saw them as evidence that small firms could prosper contrary to the arguments of the proponents of big industry. Debate focussed on whether small firm industrial districts had a genuine independent existence, or were the contingent result of large firms’ outsourcing strategies (Brusco 1990, Bagnasco 1977, Bagnasco 1978). This spurred discussion about the role of local and regional government and political parties – small firm success might need services from government, associations, or local networks (Brusco 1982, Trigilia 1986). The difficulties that many industrial districts experienced in the late 1980s and early 1990s, together with the greater flexibility of large firms, led to a second wave of research, which asked whether industrial districts had long term prospects (Harrison 1994, Trigilia 1992, Bellandi 1992, Cooke and Morgan 1994). The most recent literature examines the responses of industrial districts to these challenges; it is clear that many industrial districts have adapted successfully to changing market conditions, but only to the extent that they have changed their modes of internal organisation, and their relationship with the outside world (Amin 1998, Bellandi 1996, Dei Ottati 1996a, Dei Ottati 1996b, Burroni and Trigilia 2001).
Henry Farrell and Ann-Louise Holten, “Collective Goods in the Local Economy: The Packaging Machinery Cluster in Bologna,” Local Production Systems in Europe: Reconstruction and Innovation, ed. Colin Crouch, Patrick Le Galès, Carlo Trigilia and Helmut Voelzkow (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Farrell, Henry, and Louise Holten, ‘Collective Goods in the Local Economy: The Packaging Machinery Cluster in Bologna’, Changing Governance of Local Economies: Responses of European Local Production Systems (Oxford, 2004; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Feb. 2006), https://doi.org/10.1093/0199259402.003.0003, accessed 25 Jan. 2025.