Are industrial districts formed by networks without technologies? The diffusion of Internet application in three Italian clusters

It is widely acknowledged that there has been a technological revolution in information and communication technologies (ICT), centred on Internet applications, in recent years. However, there is still a great controversy about the extent to which ICT are transforming the competitiveness of individual firms, clusters and large economic regions. On the one hand, the use of ICT could undermine those economic systems that are very distant from the strategic motors where these developments are taking place, re-establishing a re-centralization pattern in both functional (size) and geographical (space) dimensions. On the other hand, the ‘virtualization’ of the spatial economic relations could offer economic agents located in peripheral areas a better access to the development of distance relationships. In this perspective, the assumptions of the ‘vanishing’ of physical distance could represent a fascinating ‘utopia’. This paper analyses how industrial districts (IDs), which may be considered special forms of clusters, have managed the absorption of ICT (information and communication technologies). Are they formed by networks without technologies? In order to answer this question we organized an empirical research in three selected Italian clusters. We chose three cases which are representative of the empirical variation. The investigation presented here is based on a selected sample of 42 firms interviewed (all SMEs). Their behaviours in terms of ICT technology adoption were found to be quite similar in the three IDs studied. We reached the conclusion that neither size nor the entrepreneurial cognitive frame matters in hindering diffusion. Our results seem to demonstrate that firms adopted ICT technologies with respect to end customers while they were reluctant to use B2B linkages with subcontractors and suppliers (EDI and ERP technologies). However, this should not be interpreted as a lock-in phenomenon, but as a sign that they rely on flexible and trustful informal communication that cannot easily and efficiently be virtualized in electronic form.