Territorial servitisation in Italian industrial districts: the role of technological and professional KIBS
ISSN: 1059-5422
Article publication date: 24 May 2022
Issue publication date: 15 November 2022
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyse to what extent Italian industrial districts (IDs), with their traditional manufacturing specialization, experimented a territorial servitisation process in terms of spread of specifically professional and technological knowledge-intensive business services’ activities over the period 2012–2018.
Design/methodology/approach
This 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 IDs by means of firm employment data and location quotients. Firm employment data is extracted from Statistical Archive of Active firms (ASIA) data set provided by Italian National Institute for Statistics (ISTAT). ASIA data is matched with ISTAT territorial identification of Italian local labour systems and IDs.
Findings
In 2018, Italian IDs 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.
Originality/value
The novelty of this paper is to distinguish between technological knowledge-intensive business services and professional knowledge-intensive business services and to measure the presence and the growth of these two different types of knowledge-intensive business services in Italian IDs.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Disclaimer: The authors are solely responsible for the content of the paper. The views expressed are purely those of the authors and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission.
Citation
Baldoni, E., De Propris, L. and Storai, D. (2022), "Territorial servitisation in Italian industrial districts: the role of technological and professional KIBS", Competitiveness Review, Vol. 32 No. 5, pp. 743-759. https://doi.org/10.1108/CR-11-2021-0152
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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