Industrial clusters have long been representing the backbone of the
Italian manufacturing industry. Over the last decade or so, industrial
districts went under strain due to the increasing competition in
international markets. This has implied a significant transformation,
if not disappearance, of well established business models, both in
terms of changes in organisational structures and competitive factors.
District’s firms have been forced to achieve greater efficiency either
growing in size, trough strategies of merger and acquisition and the
creation of business groups, or cutting costs, mainly via the
externalisation of labour intensive phases of production to local or
distant subcontractors, or to upgrade their core activities.
Therefore, outsourcing has become more and more a distinguished
feature of the recent evolution of industrial districts and
constitutes the object of this study.
Our investigation focuses on the industrial district of Castel
Goffredo, which is the largest European manufacturing area specialised
in tights production. We aim at analysing the determinants of
outsourcing as function of firms’ specific characteristics. In this
way we contribute to an emerging stream of empirical studies that
analyses outsourcing and offshoring using micro data. Our firm level
analysis allows to grasp the impact of firm heterogeneity on
outsourcing decision. In particular we examine how firms’
characteristics (e.g. size, degree of vertical integration, product
quality, innovation, export behaviour) affect the geographical
extension of outsourcing relations. The outcome of this analysis has
obviously implication for the internal dynamic of industrial districts
and their opportunities of development.