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The purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of leadership in the design and implementation of territorial strategies for competitiveness. It attempts to address two research questions: first, how leadership is influenced by theory and the other way around, how theory is transformed through leadership; and second, what characteristics of leadership are most important to successfully implement territorial strategies.

The paper is based on a case study of the life experience of an individual who has worked in positions of high responsibility in the government, the private sector and at the university. It is based on first-person action research combined with the contrast of two other co-authors.

Three findings may be highlighted from this case study. First, the importance of having leaders learning from their own process of leadership and co-evolving with the need for transformation which requires territorial strategies at every moment. Second, the necessity of having leaders whose objectives are aligned with those of the territory. Third, that individual leadership must have three characteristics to implement successfully territorial strategies: a balance between the individual and the collective objectives, a systemic vision and a consciousness of one’s own role in the system and a multi-level dimension.

Although territorial strategies are becoming increasingly popular both in the academia and in the policy arena, one of their critical elements, the role of individuals and that of leadership in general have not been addressed neither by scholars nor by practitioners. This paper attempts to explore the role of leadership through a case study based on the life experience of an outstanding individual in one of the regions with the longest tradition on territorial strategies for competitiveness.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

The purpose of this paper is to propose incorporating another theoretical perspective enabling corporate social responsibility (CSR) to be approached more structurally and with correspondingly broader impacts. Despite CSR being associated with competitive advantage and providing recognised sustainability related benefits, it is argued that the individual CSR results of each company and community acting separately remain insufficient not only in terms of individual competitiveness but also in terms of achieving a global and systemic improvement.

It is from this perspective that the clusters concept and the territorial social responsibility (SR) concept are advanced as susceptible to bringing important insights for advancing SR. This article seeks to reflect on the potential of SR networks for strengthening competitiveness and bringing about sustainable development. Based upon a theoretical review of the CSR literature, limitations are discussed before setting out alternative action strategies for the construction of networks focusing upon generating territorial dynamics within the logic of global sustainability.

The idea of CSR clusters and territorial SR presupposes groupings of companies located in the same territory and engaged in some degree of interaction with other local actors to optimise practices contributing towards sustained regional development in an integrated and global perspective. The definition of social goals shared by different actors structured within a network thus improves the design and implementation of actions that extend beyond a micro-scale of action, with significant benefits accruing to local communities. Analysis of these forms of social innovation, based on integrated CSR networks, constitutes the central objective of the present research.

This theoretical perspective is, in turn, based upon the assumption that only the consideration of a wider and more extensive conception of CSR, which aligns and guides various social actors (companies, civil society organisations and local authorities) and seeks to nurture integrated SR networks, will be able to drive development characterised by significant higher levels of sustainability.

These concepts (SR clusters and territorial SR) presuppose groupings of companies located in the same territory and engaged in some degree of interaction with other local actors are able to optimise practices contributing towards sustained regional development from an integrated and global perspective. The definition of social goals shared by different actors structured within a network thus improves the design and implementation of actions that extend beyond a micro-scale of action, with significant benefits accruing to local communities.

Considering a larger scope of intervention, connecting different social actors (companies, civil society organisations and local authorities) and working for the construction of a development model based on the concept of sustainability constitute the relevance of clusters to CSR and the SR of territories.

This article highlights the position that SR, to have any effective and widespread impact, has to extend beyond isolated actions uncoordinated with overall territorial development. The challenge involves establishing a connection between the business level and civil society organisations in which each acts within their own spheres and with their respective specific competences and skills whilst able to ensure cooperation and engagement in actions focussed upon improving the quality of life of the host community and bringing about cluster development in overall terms. This theoretical perspective is, in turn, based upon the assumption that only the consideration of a wider and more extensive conception of CSR, which aligns and guides various social actors (companies, civil society organisations and local authorities) and seeks to nurture integrated SR networks, will be able to drive development characterised by significantly higher levels of sustainability.

This paper aims to investigate the competitiveness of Russian regional medium-sized oil complexes with relatively small fossil oil reserves. Taking into account the urgency for competitiveness, the authors have developed a specific assessment methodology and competitive development strategy that could be implemented within the framework of a scenario approach.

The suggested methodology for assessing the competitiveness of regional production complexes is based on the pattern method. Validation is provided for a modular structure and an approach to constructing indices of competitiveness of production complexes. A system of competitiveness indicators has been devised in relation to regional oil complexes.

The case study of the oil complex of the Republic of Udmurtia has yielded competitiveness assessment forecast for a variety of development scenarios up until 2025. A methodology of competitiveness assessment is proposed as a result of the analysis of the two cases.

This analysis is based on the oil complex in Udmurtia, Russia. The main limitation of the research scope is the extent and nature of the industrial complex. The proposed design can be used for large industrial complexes operating in the field of industrial production. It needs to be extended to more clusters, more industries and other countries’ settings for the sake of comparison and generalization.

The practical effects of the study suggest a set of strategic development tools of assessment of the dynamics of industrial complexes’ development, identification of competitive advantage and “bottlenecks” and definition of the objectives and programs of their long-term development and justification of policies and programs of perspective development.

This paper reveals specific features of oil complexes’ competitiveness, which has seldom been investigated both theoretically and empirically.

The measurement of regional competitiveness is becoming essential for policymakers to address territorial disparities, while considering the issue of correlations among indicators. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to measure regional competitiveness using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) by considering different distance measures and two levels of analysis to provide a comparative and comprehensive measurement of regional competitiveness in Europe.

The authors apply TOPSIS based on three different distance measures (the Manhattan, the Euclidean and the Mahalanobis distance measures) to the regions of the EU Regional Competitiveness Index (RCI) 2019, which is taken as the frame of reference.

The authors replicate the RCI by using TOPSIS with a less preferred choice of distance measure, indicating TOPSIS as a valuable method for policymakers in the analysis of regional competitiveness. The authors argue in favour of the Mahalanobis distance measure as the best of the three, as it considers correlations among macro-economic indicators.

This study aims to make three contributions. Firstly, by replicating the RCI by means of TOPSIS with a less preferred choice of distance measure, the paper provides a benchmark for future research on regional competitiveness. Secondly, by suggesting the use of TOPSIS with the use of the Mahalanobis distance measure, the authors show how to measure regional competitiveness by taking into account correlations among pillars. Thirdly, the authors argue in favour of considering clusters of regions when measuring regional competitiveness.

This paper aims to investigate the smart economic development (SED) patterns in Europe in relation to competitiveness. Motivational focus corresponds to global events: the fourth industrial revolution, transition to a low-carbon economy, economic shocks (such as the 2008 financial crisis, Brexit or the coronavirus pandemic), which requires rethinking development policies, targeting competitiveness increase and reducing imbalances in economic development.

The analysis includes self-organising neural networks cluster analysis and correlations, comparative analysis of SED indicators structure and cumulative index estimation with World Economic Forum (WEF) global competitiveness index. The panel data set of 19 years from 2000 to 2018 for 30 European countries.

Overall, cross-country examination suggests that European countries of higher competitiveness illustrate higher estimates in SED. The key determinants are juridical fairness, social responsibility, competence building, intelligence and welfare employment to develop smart patterns for reaching higher competitiveness.

The limitations relate to the particular sample of European countries and gathering statistical data and a methodology of the SED index calculation. In addition, the paper contains a macroeconomic environment focus on competitiveness estimation. Further research may be improved with micro and mezzo environment incorporation at a cross-country analysis level.

By linking well-known terms of competitiveness and economic development with a concept of smartness, new approaches to policymaking emerged. The methodology presented in this paper has implications for territorial cohesion policies, competitiveness and branching strategies. The combination of SED sub-indexes and WEF GCI might aid a more accurate ex ante measurement.

The findings are essential for fostering a smart approach in economic development for long-term competitiveness.

This paper provides original empirical evidence about the relationship between SED and competitiveness and adds new knowledge that smartness becomes a way for building countries’ competitiveness by identified two profiles of SED patterns by development stages, namely, integrated to economic development and institutional-based which is divided to focus and balanced.

Today a large majority of European citizens feels very uncomfortable about the lack of solutions for the ongoing economic-financial crisis. The EU institutions and the member states are engaged in intensive dialogues with each other while ignoring the necessity to translate the crisis into clear political terms understandable for public opinion. This may be one of the explanations of the disconnection of public opinion from the integration process which is often leading to a support for populist and nationalist movements. At the same time this crisis has made Europe more important than ever before for the daily lives of citizens. It is therefore important to support projects that allow citizens and civil society at large to become involved in EU affairs. Apart from the “Europe for Citizens program” (2014–2020) there are, although very few, examples in EU policy making where the sphere of public debate has been widened up, allowing citizens to participate more intensively in the democratic life of the Union. In the rural development pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) a “participatory democracy” tool has been created in order to stimulate from the grassroots the economic growth of rural areas: the Leader initiative.

The objective of this study is threefold–first, to develop a Regional Competitiveness Index (RCI) for measuring competitiveness of sub-national regions for India; second, to test this index for its ability to explain regional growth, which validates usage and applicability of this index; and third, to further investigate if the competitiveness of states is in turn caused by economic growth, i.e. it is tested if there is a bidirectional causality between competitiveness and regional growth.

The data of indicators used in the index are from sources available freely in public domain. The competitiveness index is constructed using equal weightage supported by principal component analysis (PCA) technique. The causal relationship analysis is done using panel data of 10 years from 2008 to 2017 for 32 Indian states/union territories. The generalized method of moments (GMMs) is used for this dynamic regression estimation.

Based on RCI score, states have been ranked and through rank analysis, the authors observe the performance status of these sub-national regions and are able to categorize them as improving, no change or deteriorating in regional competitiveness. Using the GMM estimation, the association between RCI and economic growth is found to be significant at 10% level. This shows that regional competitiveness as captured through the RCI score is able to explain regional economic growth and economic disparity among the sub-national units. Further, that RCI score is found to Granger-cause growth, while growth does not lead to better RCI scores. This establishes the usefulness of RCI as an important policy variable to compare states and provide direction for sectoral reforms.

The limitations of the study include (1) broad assumption that these sub-national regions belong to a uniform macro-economic and technology environment, and (2) data constraints as it is a longitudinal study. The study implies that the composite index could capture differences in regional competitiveness explaining regional economic disparity and that competitiveness causes higher economic growth and not vice versa.

The RCI score can prove to be a useful indicator of economic performance of different states and can be used by national and state policymakers to compare and assess regional disparity among different states. The pillar-wise scores will be useful for in-depth study of weakness and strength of the sub-national territories.

Construction of an RCI for sub-national territories and analysis of panel data for longitudinal study of ten years is unique in the regional competitiveness literature.

This paper aims to explore how territory impacts on entrepreneurial families’ (EFs) embeddedness to unveil the role that territories play on the continuity and development of EFs.

To study complex contexts where subjective realities are analyzed, a constructivist qualitative approach is recommended. Given that, this paper develops a qualitative methodology in which 25 semi-structured interviews were carried out and analyzed based upon the use of ATLAS.ti, following an open-coding approach.

This paper found out that the territory can condition EFs’ embeddedness in different ways. First, through the cultural embeddedness, the shared territorial understanding of values and norms inherited by the history of the territory. Second, by the political embeddedness, i.e. the power exercised by territorial economic actors and non-market institutions. Third, through the structural embeddedness generated by the territorial social networks and the generation of close relationships and finally, through the so-called cognitive embeddedness, the territorial actors’ representations, interpretations and meanings. These four modes of territorial embeddedness are unfolded in a set of 16 territorial factors that impact on EFs’ embeddedness. Most of the identified factors, 14 out of the 16, are acting mainly over one of the embeddedness modes studied (cultural, political, structural and cognitive), while two of them, because they are operating simultaneously on various modes of embeddedness, have been considered transversal factors.

EFs have, to a great extent, been recognized as major generators of positive externalities in the territories in which they are located, and to date, the literature has focused on the impact that firms and family firms have on regional development. However, how the territory conditions the embeddedness of these families, especially how it impacts on the EFs’ territorial embeddedness, remains unexplored. This paper proposes a framework of 16 factors that help to understand the embeddedness dynamics between EFs and territories, serving as a starting point for future research avenues. Additionally, regional policy makers may use it as a guidance to build policy mix that considers these territorial factors to boost EFs’ embeddedness.