MAIN SCHOOLS IN THE STUDIES OF INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTS AND THE INTEGRATED FRAMEWORK: A THEORITICAL CONSRUCTION OF LEARNING INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTS
MIAO Chang-hong
Research Center of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development and College of Environment and Planning, Henan University, Kaifeng 475001, China
Abstract With the progress of theoretical and empirical studies, various scholars, mainly but not exclusively based on North America and western Europe, who have highlighted the significance of the region as an effective arena for participating in the global competition and situating the institutions of post-Fordist economic governance, have advanced some different concepts and approaches to explain the mechanism of reemergence and resurgence of industrial districts like Emilia-Romagna in Italy, Baden-Wü rtternberg in Germany and Silicon Valley in the United States. Among them, six distinct strands of research can be identified. Some scholars such as Bagnasco, Becattini, Piore and Sabel argued that the success of "the Third Italy" was bound up with the an ongoing shift from mass production to flexible specialization, in contrast, a Californian school of economic geographers like Storper, Scott and Walker argued that the rise of new industrial space was explained mainly through an analysis of changing organizational structures and traded and non-traded interdependences. While the GREMI school in continental Europe emphasized the importance of innovative milieu and some scholars, especially Porter, in strategic management research highlighted the significance of industrial clusters, other scholars such as Cooke, Morgan and Asheim pay more attention to the regional innovation system from the insights of broader literatures on national systems of innovation and a few scholars like Markusen and Park tried to generalize the theory of industrial districts and focused more on the rise of second tier cities, both in developed countries and in developing countries. Although these strands tell us some specific mechanisms about the changing relationships among regions, knowledge creation and competitive advantage, it is obvious that the precise nature of these relationships is not clear and these approaches need to be integrated.
2006, Vol. 21 
