Enrico Giovannetti

Industrial districts and internationalization: the case of the agri-food industry in Modena, Italy

The paper explores the structural changes, in response to internationalization, in an important traditional activity (food chain, meat processing) in a typical ‘district area’. In the paper, attention is focused on the ‘Institutional structure of production’ (Coase, R. 1992) and the cluster is considered as a whole, as a complex economic player, capable of generating coherent action, regulated by institutional mechanisms, and founded on a set of ‘public assets’ which make up its ‘social capital’.  The paper is based on many empirical studies and surveys aimed at exploring the structure of SMEs and the role of the local institutions: the changes observed over time and in response to internationalization underline the reinforcement of the activitys cluster configuration. These features emphasize the existence of a specific unit of analysis, indivisible from the individuals which constitute it. The discussion touches on the classical themes of the efficiency of the net-economy based on SMEs, and their prospects in a context of growing globalization. The paper does not aim to enter into the debate on the origins and mechanism of innovation. However, the case study does illustrate the strength of the hypothesis of a unit of analysis different from the firm for discussion of a number of topics: some empirical examples of innovation, of significance for the economic consolidation of the ID, highlight the importance of district relationships in the production and spread of innovation.

Tempo e giustizia nella conciliazione vita-lavoro

Work-life balance is one of the current issues within the academic, political, and managerial debate. An article discussed in a TAO Research Programs seminar held in June 2015 at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, suggests a critical interpretation of the mainstream literature and its related controversial results in terms of work-life reconciliation practices. The article also provides an alternative analytical framework based on Bruno Maggi’s organization theory, Norbert Elias’ theory of time, and Amartya Sen’s theory of justice. Scholars from different universities and disciplines contribute with comments on the notions of time, justice, organization and the proposed interpretative framework as well.

Spatial Mismatch and Mobility Issues in Welfare Policies, a Common Approach

Abstract An economic growth which is wide-area scattered is one of the most important indicator of social well-being and is such a strong factor that can induce long-range demographic dynamics. The resulting effect can be a problem of Spatial Mismatch, SM. This work will try to explain the relationship between SMs and the more general Transaction Costs, TCs. The proposed institutionalist theoretical framework will be used also to show the role of local public economies on TCs through the social production/consumption of common goods. The case study, the provinces of Modena and Reggio Emilia, have a long history of economic distributed growth—production districts—but now scale-increasing local management complexity and fiscal constraints seems to begin to produce SMs.

La mobilità come common ambientale : uno schema per la valutazione delle politiche

La mobilita come common ambientale: uno schema per la valutazione delle politiche - The debated issue of sustainable mobility has become one of the main points on every decision-maker agenda since the last thirty years. The idea proposed in this work is to redefine the resource «mobility» as a common good, which is produced by a collective action. In other words, the mobility of people and goods is both a structural aspect of the issue of environmental common reconstruction and a fundamental asset of a community of agents’ social capital. The common good is thus socially constructed through the system of rights related to its use, reproduction or destruction, generated by the relationship network between agents. In the literature the debate seems mainly focused on the regulation of competition under conditions of «externalities » or market «failures», or on regulator failures, while a careful consideration of the strict linkage between structural generators (economic growth, demographic pressure, infrastructural weaknesses) and simultaneous failures both of the market and of the regulation policies can be rarely found. For this reasons, the aim of the present work is the construction of appropriate methodologies for the evaluation of scalable mobility policies suitable to be adopted from local level decision-makers to wider areas. Using an institutional framework that includes this social and iterated definition of the resource «mobility», we build indicators capable of modelling a traffic jam in its subjective determinants, and in order to check their reliability we test them against several case studies. The paper is completed by the formalisation of an example mobility policy, carried out using the proposed indicators. JEL Q01, D62, D85, L91, K23