Innovation in Clusters. Estelle Vallier
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and their influence in France
At the end of the 1970s, sociologists Arnaldo Bagnasco and Carlo Trigilia (1977, 1984, 1988) and economist Sebastiano Brusco (1982, 1986) published their research on the Third Italy, the term used to describe regions referred to as intermediate because of their geographical location between the highly industrial regions of northwestern Italy and the Mezzogiorno, characterized by a lower level of economic development. The Third Italy specializes “in traditional (clothing, footwear, leather, furniture, etc.) or more modern (small mechanics, electrical engineering, etc.) activities, whose production process can be easily broken down” (Daumas 2007, p. 133). The industrial organization of this area is characterized by a strong presence of small and medium-sized enterprises that participate only in certain phases of production and do not integrate a vertical model into their processes (as opposed to the mass production processes of large factories, especially in automobile production, further north). This would therefore be a dynamic specific to small businesses (Bagnasco 1977).
These early studies emphasized the social characteristics of this region and, in particular, the family ties in the cooperation of businesses and the learning of trades. In these regions, described as “urbanized countryside”, there would be a solidarity of the rural family at the time of the creation of an artisanal or commercial activity, succeeding or completing the original agricultural activity and then finding the political, logistical and social resources from medium-sized towns of the region. The network of parishes, especially in Veneto, is also highlighted as a source of information and exchange of know-how necessary for the creation of small businesses. The authors thus mobilize the Bourdieusian concept of social capital, as a “durable network of interknowledge and interrecognition relations of varying degrees of institutionalization” (Bourdieu 1980, p. 2), made available to potential entrepreneurs belonging to this local community. The focus is on interindividual relations and the cultural environment. Based on this work and his own analysis of the province of Prato in Tuscany, Giacommo Beccatini proposes a definition of the Italian district (Becattini 1989):
A socioterritorial entity, characterized by the active association, in a circumscribed and historically determined territorial area, of a community of people and a population of industrial enterprises. In the district, unlike what happens in other environments, such as the manufacturing city, community and business tend to, as it were, interpenetrate (Daumas 2007, p. 134).
Studies on the Third Italy thus revive and further develop Marshall’s concept of the district. They particularly emphasize the local accumulation of know-how, individual interdependencies and the interpenetration of businesses with a community of people.
Inspired by the Italian studies, research is also being conducted in France with the aim of identifying “territorial configurations similar to districts” (Guillaume 2008, p. 298) in other countries. This has led to work on “localized industrial systems” (Raveyre and Saglio 1984), as well as, under the impetus of a team from Grenoble, the economists Courlet and Pecqueur addressed “local productive systems” (Courlet and Pecqueur 1991, 1992). Raveyre and Saglio worked on the Oyonnax agglomeration, where industry was based on a single activity: the production of plastics. For them, this fabric of SMEs in the same sector cannot be analyzed as a scaled-down large enterprise, because the conflicts of power and the relations of competition and cooperation are not regulated in the same way as in large groups. These SMEs are involved in complex systems of relations (Raveyre and Saglio 1984, p. 159). For them, what is important is the local social act into which industrial firms are inserted, because defining a localized industry “is not a simple statistical aggregation operation” (ibid., p. 160). They seek to look beyond the simple observation of a competitive situation and to determine the social construct of the localized industrial system, which is composed of a set of historically constituted standards and rules of conduct (ibid., p. 168). In the localized industrial system, collective mutual aid exists between firms in the event of difficulties or necessity.
On the other hand, Raveyre and Saglio consider that cooperation is not only defensive but also oriented towards strategies of development and adaptation of the technical potential of local industries (ibid., p. 165). The system produces, through innovations, a disruption of the organization of work that translates into new trades and new training. Finally, another key element for the authors lies in the relations that the system maintains with local political authorities, which constitute a fundamental issue for the system’s sustainability (ibid., p. 174). In the local production systems studied by Courlet and Pecqueur (1992), the definition is broader than for the districts. They may therefore refer to similar activities in which enterprises cooperate on peripheral dimensions (transport, exports, etc.) or to complementary activities (Courlet 2002, p. 89) and, as a result, a network of subcontractors emerges (Guillaume 2008, p. 298). In some cases, businesses do not necessarily belong to the same sector and, unlike the district, do not participate in the multiple stages of industrial production. Moreover, the relationships are not familial, but professional and informal in a local productive system. In his work on the “Alpine furrow”, however, the geographer Bernard Pecqueur (1995) qualifies this aspect and identifies relatively poor direct relations between businesses. Each has its own regional, national and even European and global geography, and what link businesses together are the territorial resources they share. Housing, amenities, infrastructure, facilities and the skilled labor market thus tend to unify them.
Despite some variations, both the Italian and French studies agree that the unit of analysis is not the enterprise, but the “district” as a whole, with interconnected firms (Brusco 1990). The focus has thus shifted from the enterprise itself to the space around it.
1.1.3. The rise of districts: the end of the Fordist enterprise?
Some authors see the sign of a more general economic change in the organization of industrial districts, in which Fordist mass production gives way to the industrial development of flexible specialization. This observation is mainly defended by regulationist economists (Boyer, Aglietta, Saillard, Coriat, etc.), who consider the accumulation regime concept as a tendency inherent to the capitalist mode of production, and which corresponds to regularities ensuring a general and relatively coherent progression of capital accumulation. These regularities operate within institutions that govern, among other things, competition, money, wage relations, etc. Depending on the place and the period, these institutional configurations may change. The Fordist mode of regulation articulated macroeconomic regularities on an international scale, while at the same time being subject to national compromises (Boyer and Saillard 2002). During the intense period of Fordism, the national scale was considered the relevant level of accumulation.
However, this economic and social regulation, which was being carried out within large enterprises, is no longer appropriate. Indeed, the crisis of Fordism is reflected in a crisis of territory at the level of the nation state (caused by a triple movement of tertiarization, deregulation and globalization) and a crisis of legitimacy of the welfare state with the emergence of mass unemployment (Carré and Levratto 2011, p. 360). In this context of capital internationalization and the crisis of the state, institutional arrangements are regional (EU, NAFTA) and international (WTO, for example), rather than solely national. In France, some authors see a disappearance of the Colbertist state (Mustar and Laredo 2002) and the emergence of new public actors, such as Europe and local authorities. As a result, the new post-Fordist regulations would be posed jointly in terms of sector and territory (Laurent and Du Tertre 2008). This approach is in line with theories that consider that a new geography of flexible accumulation is emerging in reaction to the Fordist mode of accumulation (Storper and Scott 1990). In a seminal work, Michael Piore and Charles Sabel (1986) develop the concept of flexible specialization as an alternative model to Fordist mass production, based on the emergence of local industrial models, notably the Italian districts (Hirst and Zeitlin 1992). Industrialization with flexible specialization is understood to be:
A form of production based on individual initiatives or on those of small enterprises that will work together to build, through rather complex and informal transactional systems, products intended for the market (consumer products or production components) […]. This specialization in a segment favors flexibility in the production of the components