Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Sassuolo is the centre for the ceramics industry.
In these industrial districts, the materials used are for the most part natural
materials characterized by variability, even within one batch of timber or leather,
and thus they are not readily susceptible to mass handling. In these
circumstances, small industries using medium-level technology, requiring
considerable personal attention to the way processes are being carried out
(discard of unsuitable products, reprocessing of some faulty materials, changes in
machine tensions or tolerances), have been able to survive in competition with
larger ones. Many of the products are fashion goods, or at least subject to
changing taste, so that the finish or the design must change from one week to the
next. The firms involved are generally small and independent. Some of them are
family firms, or have been in the recent past.
Among the other characteristics of the Third Italy industrial districts are: the
flexible use of labour (expansion of the labour force to finish a large order, for
example, by bringing in relatives of the main worker); flexible machinery, able
to use slightly different materials from one batch to the next; and the flexibility
conferred to firms by being in a group of similar operations, so that the loss of
one market or supplier does not mean a crisis. Each firm is in touch with a
number of different suppliers, and several markets, and can balance one against
the others. It is worth noting that flexibility in the industrial district means
between firms and products; spatial flexibility is lost, because all the advantages
come from being in a cluster of firms. From the point of view of the region or
town involved, this is a positive point; the industry is more likely to remain
under these conditions. This happy situation does not apply to all such firms, and
Amin (1989) noted another kind of flexibility in the Italian case, which is
essentially a centre-periphery structure. One big firm, such as Benetton with
clothing, has many subcontractors working for it, and Benetton has the flexibility
of being able to change its output by changing subcontractors. The
subcontractors themselves may have work only from Benetton, however, or have
most of their work dominated by this one firm. This kind of flexibility is closer
to that of the Japanese car-makers.
Beyond the internal structure of the firms, there is a second, social level of
support for the industry, as mentioned earlier in the general comments.
Communal support is available from the local chambers of commerce or industry
organizations which act as information clearing houses, advising workers and
firms of jobs available, and perhaps also providing technical assistance and
organizing export links or other marketing for the small firms, which
individually cannot manage these functions. Thus industrial districts have a logic
that moves beyond straight economics. Most, if not all, the economic features
could be explained in terms of external economies for small firms, but a special
social structure and a cooperative attitude make the whole phenomenon more
complex (Harrison 1992). It is not solely in Italy that such structures are found;
to some extent, flexible specialization of this kind can be found in all of
Mediterranean Europe, and examples from Spain (the shoe industry of Alicante,
