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Small firm clusters are noted for their success across the globe. Inter‐firm cooperation and trust is said to be central to their success. But past research has restricted itself to ‘culture’ based explanations for cooperation and trust, that is, characteristic based trust. Doubts have been cast by a few studies about characteristic alone being a rationale for trust. In this paper, using the existing classification of trust and based on qualitative data from secondary literature on small firm clusters; we have argued for existence of more generalized bases of trust, namely knowledge and institutions, which develop through interaction among parties and can possibly lead to trust and cooperation in small firm clusters.

The tannery industry impacts strongly on water bodies due to the presence of chemical substances, such as chlorides, sulphates, chromium and other pollutants. This study has been carried out with a view to enhance the environmental compatibility of the Arzignano tannery district (northern Italy) which is the largest in Italy, by improving the quality of the Fratta-Gorzone River. Sediment quality, according to the driving forces-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) scheme, has been developed as a significant impact indicator to be applied at basin level. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the above issues.

Data were produced during institutional monitoring and control activities carried out by ARPAV (Veneto Region Environmental Prevention and Protection Agency) according to official methods. To define the environmental impacts on the river basin, a statistical assessment was performed on water and sediment quality data to establish the degree of correlation for the main pollutants along the river stem.

In the basin considered, sediment quality presents high levels of contamination from heavy metals – in particular chromium (Cr) (III) – as well as organic pollutants. Investigation of the pressure sources revealed that the discharge from the Arzignano tannery district is the main source of Cr (III), according to background studies performed in the same area.

The quality of river sediments must be improved in order to avoid the re-suspension/solubility of pollutants; dredged materials with high polluting substances must be managed with specific precautions in order to safeguard the environment.

The river studied is currently the only significant water body in which sediment monitoring has been performed in the Veneto Region (Italy) since 2002. This study presents issues linked to the characterization of river sediment and the correlation between sediment quality and water pollution and prior and current pressure sources.

This paper aims to investigate the distinctive economic and social dynamics of ethnic quasi-enclave industrial sub-clusters and to econometrically analyse the main factors affecting the economic performance of Chinese-migrant microentrepreneurs with a specific focus on social capital.

An interpretative framework that encompasses sustainable local human development and mixed embeddedness is applied to a case study of Wenzhounese migrant socioeconomic quasi-enclave leather industrial sub-clusters located adjacent to the industrial district area of Florence, Italy. Given the complexity of the phenomenon, the research study adopted a mixed-method approach encompassing both qualitative and quantitative methods. The econometric analysis was based on data collected via a survey administered to a random sample of enterprises.

Ethnic social capital plays a central role in ethnic entrepreneurship. The results confirm the relevance of social networks in the context analysed and reveal the importance of ethnic and non-ethnic business social capital as one of the main factors affecting enterprise’s economic performance.

The findings propose potential policies to upgrade the ethnic enterprises especially in terms of increasing their formality and inclusion in the Italian social and economic systems of production.

This analysis contributes to existing literature on migrant entrepreneurship and communities, adding new evidence related to ethnic enterprises and the importance of social capital in terms of performance and working conditions of the community of entrepreneurs.

The administrative structure of the Republic of Belarus; the main demographic, social, and economic problems currently encountered in regions, districts, cities, and other administrative divisions of the country; as well as trends and changes in regional development according to the statistics of spatial development of Belarus over the last quarter of a century have been considered. The legal and institutional framework established in Belarus for the formation, implementation, and improvement of the regional policy, as well as the related forms of state intervention in regional development (policies to minimize the effects of radioactive contamination in areas affected by the Chernobyl accident, environmental protection, town-planning and land-use policies) have been analyzed. The goals and objectives, subjects and objects, as well as the tools used by the Belarusian public authorities in the regional policy formation and implementation nationwide have been identified. The promising trends for its improvement pursued in Belarus have been formulated taking into account the foreign experience and the paradigm shift of regional development policy observed in the OECD member countries.

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among a firm’s industrial cluster involvement, organizational learning and its ability to successfully adapt to external environment.

Field survey research method was used, and data were collected from 943 high-technology companies in the USA, China, Taiwan and Sweden. Multiple regression analysis, as well as mediation test, was conducted to analyze the data.

The study finds that being positioned in an industrial cluster enhances a firm’s learning and further leads to a firm’s desired adaptive outcomes.

Using self-reported data could be a potential limitation of this study. It would be preferable to have other forms of data for a study. Further, cross-cultural comparisons are needed to enhance our understanding in this multicultural setting.

The findings provide business executives, as well as policymakers, a new way of thinking in respect to how to develop holistic learning practices and improve inter-firm trust to appropriately adapt to the fast changing environment.

The major contribution of this study is an initial attempt to provide a comprehensive approach in analyzing a firm’s industrial cluster involvement. Further, the study attempts to empirically examine learning and cluster involvement in relation to organizational adaptation.

The burgeoning population has an adverse impact on the employability prospects in the emerging economies and has triggered entrepreneurial activities to steer this predicament. The purpose of this study is to explicate the major entrepreneurial competencies that drive firm competitiveness.

Three industrial estates were selected from the two major industrial districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh, India. The study used a cross-sectional design and responses from micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) entrepreneurs were collected by employing a structured questionnaire. Structural equation modeling was applied to empirically validate the proposed hypotheses in the study.

The study discerns the enablers of firm competitiveness and pursuit of excellence. The results reveal that the need for achievement and locus of control competencies strikingly augment firm competitiveness while risk-taking capability and innovativeness competencies aggrandize pursuit of excellence competency. The study further adduces that pursuit of excellence partially mediates between the liaison of risk-taking capability and innovativeness on the one end and firm competitiveness on the other.

The study demonstrates the compelling determinants of firm competitiveness and pursuit of excellence that might embolden training institutes and banks to emphasize the identified competencies for enhancing firm competitiveness and advancing loans.

There is a paucity of literature on “pursuit of excellence” and “firm competitiveness” regarding the MSME sector in India. Therefore, the study contributes to the literature by synthesizing these constructs in an epigrammatic conceptual model. The study is distinctive because it is one of the rare studies to explore the mediating effects of the pursuit of excellence entrepreneurial competency.

This paper aims to focus on two basic dimensions of group work: cooperation and transfer of information. This paper has two objectives. The first objective is to analyse the effect of cooperation and transfer of information in group work according to employees’ perceptions of the Rioja wine industry. The second objective is to analyse the existence of significant differences in the perception of the basic dimensions of group work under different organisational contexts in the Rioja wine industry.

The participants in the study are 230 workers from the Rioja wine industry. The data is collected through a personal interview using a questionnaire. Hypotheses are tested by multiple regression analysis.

The results indicate firstly that cooperation and transfer of information is related to “group work” variable positively, and secondly, significant differences were found in each of the contexts analysed. Besides, it has been found that the variable “transfer of information” is more explanatory of group work differences in organisational contexts than the variable “cooperation”.

This study verified that there is no homogeneity in group work in the Rioja wine industry. This study contributes to the knowledge about a significant industry of the economy and culture of the Rioja region, and the wine sector in general.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to study how local government policy influences the structure of Chinese pharmaceutical clusters during their industrial catch-up.

This paper applies a case study method by targeting pharmaceutical clusters in Tonghua, Taizhou, and Tianjin.

The varied structures of pharmaceutical clusters in China demonstrate local governments' efforts to utilize local resources accordingly. While the local governments in China introduce different policies to firms with different ownership in the process of constructing different cluster composition, all the local governments emphasize motivating the development of small- and middle-sized enterprises for cluster dynamics.

The local governments should try to reach a balance between short-term foundation and long-term competitiveness for industrial cluster development.

This paper provides the detailed analysis of local governments' influences on the formation of pharmaceutical clusters in China and helps to enrich the knowledge about how local government promotes industrial clusters to realize industrial catch-up through sectoral innovation system.