The paper reconsiders the key issue of the industrial district and the multinational enterprise as two alternative or complementary drivers of local development in the light of new empirical evidence. That evidence derives from the results of two surveys of the determinants of linkages between...

Global economy is transforming the sources of the competitive advantages of firms, especially for firms embedded in local manufacturing systems. Based on the theoretical contributions to knowledge management and industrial districts, this paper describes alternative firm's strategies and...

The paper is oriented at improving the understanding of internationalization strategies of firms by applying the global value chain studies at the firm level, in the context of SMEs. An original contribution of our paper is to apply such theoretical approach to the Italian model of economic...

Italian district small and medium enterprises (SMEs) developed aggressive strategies to extend their sales networks and supply chains abroad. Literature on districts offered alternative explanations about the impacts of internationalization on local manufacturing systems. The authors consider...

Theories of innovation have drawn on the dominant form that the process took in the 1960s and 1970s: one characterized by high-tech endeavors, usually based on formal research and scientific investigations, involving patenting and corporations' research laboratories. Those specific assumptions...

Literature on eco-parks and eco-clusters has emphasized the opportunities for the coupling of local economic development and sustainability, going beyond firms’ green strategies to include also supply chains and local networks of firms. Studies have described the conditions and policies...

The paper compares the supply network strategies of ID (district firms) and non-ID (non-district firms) with a dual aim: to provide an overview of emerging strategies and to identify similarities and differences between business models. The quantitative analysis developed in the paper is based...

The new economy presents extraordinary opportunities for growth and profit of electronic management of business-to-business relationships. E-marketplaces, or digital exchanges, represent one of the most promising phenomena in this environment but, despite the promises, many of these B-to-B...