Oligarchic place leadership and resistance to change in industrial districts

Abstract

The capability of local productive systems to react positively to disruptive challenges, entering new paths of development, depends on the presence of supportive local institutions, organizations and actors. A quite recent literature points out the key support given to path transformation by sets of local actors expressing a place leadership (PL). With a focus on industrial districts (IDs), characterized by a manufacturing specialization and a decentralized business organization based on SMEs, the paper aims at exploring conditions of a PL resisting change. We develop a conceptual frame that enables the identification of three different types of PL: open PL, corporate PL, and oligarchic PL. Specifically, oligarchic PL allows to reflect on models of developments and structural conditions where changes to meet disruptive challenges could be intentionally obstructed. In this regard, the paper provides some considerations and examples on how a model deviating from the canonical ID of local development and expressing an oligarchic PL could drive local productive systems through lock-in conditions.

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