Territorial servitisation in Italian industrial districts: the role of technological and professional KIBS

Purpose The paper aims at analysing to what extend Italian industrial districts, with their traditional manufacturing specialization, experimented a territorial servitisation process in terms of spread of knowledge-intensive business services’ activities over the period 2012-2018. Design/Methodology/Approach The paper articulates knowledge-intensive business services activities in two types, technological knowledge-intensive business services and professional knowledge-intensive business services. It tracks their growth and their co-location with manufacturing sectors in Italian industrial districts by means of firm employment data and location quotients. Firm employment data is extracted from ASIA dataset (data bank of active companies in Italy) provided by ISTAT (Italian National Institute for Statistics). ASIA data is matched with ISTAT territorial identification of Italian Local Labour Systems and Industrial Districts. Findings In 2018, Italian industrial districts featured, next to their traditional over-specialisation in manufacturing activities, an under-specialisation in knowledge-intensive business services’ activities. Nevertheless, the dynamic analysis carried out over the period 2012-2018 shows that IDs firm employment in technological knowledge-intensive business services and professional knowledge-intensive business services grew at a higher rate than the national average.

BALDONI Edoardo;  DE PROPRIS Lisa;  STORAI Dimitri; 

2022-11-21

Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.

JRC129004

1059-5422 (online),   

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/CR-11-2021-0152/full/html,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC129004,   

10.1108/CR-11-2021-0152 (online),