From an economic perspective, the enlargement of the European Union means much more than commercial and political integration. It also means a merger and re-working of pre-existing production networks and structures that date back to the 1970s and 1980s. This research focuses on a more recent case of such expansion of networks and structures: the outsourcing of clothing and textile industries from industrial districts in Italy to Eastern Europe, where Italian textile and clothing firms are explicitly attempting to develop industrial districts in and around their new investments. The research will perform comparative analyses of these attempts by lead-firms to stimulate industrial networks centered on new production facilities. The fieldwork will be conducted on key sites where Italian investors have committed to these broader industrial and regional programs. Preliminary research has already identified these four cases where investments have had substantial impacts on local economies: in Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and Western Ukraine. The researcher will interview managers in lead-firms, input suppliers, and buying firms, as well as local government officials involved in the explicit industrial networks policies in each of those areas. He will also carry out interviews of textile and clothing firms in Northern Italy who are outsourcing to and investing in these case study regions. The interviews will have three central areas of investigation: 1) The geographies of Italian entrepreneurship in Eastern Europe. This section will investigate the decision-making processes and the social aspects of moving businesses abroad. Particular attention will be devoted to the moment of encounter between Italian entrepreneurs and the local partners and workers. 2) The processes leading sample areas in Eastern Europe to the development of industrial districts. This section analyzes the conditions associated with the formation of industrial districts, and specifically the characteristics that manufacturers and buyers identify with agglomeration success or failure. 3) The relations between social and economic processes affecting emerging industrial districts in Eastern Europe and the practices of outsourcing of production from Italy. This part seeks to understand whether Italian firms moving abroad are igniting in the recipient areas the formation of practices and relationships among firms, and between firms and institutions similar to the industrial districts in Italy.
A major theoretical contribution of this work will be to bridge the literatures on outsourcing and industrial districts. In some areas of Eastern Europe networks of small and medium enterprises are emerging. In several cases, local governments are hoping to deepen those networks and districts through explicit regional and industrial policies to sustain economic growth and development. In so doing, these state and regional government agencies are explicitly modelling their efforts on Italian 'industrial districts' in the 1970s and 1980s. Concomitantly, Italian firms have recently been extending their investments in key places in Central and Eastern Europe, and in doing so they have been exacting commitments from local businesses and governments to supporting the backward and forward linkages they see as essential to effective industrial strategy. This project will investigate and assess the ways in which this is happening and the consequences for industrial and regional development.
