Entrepreneurship and Diffuse Industrialization

This study analyzes the social characteristics of the development of small firms in a communist-based area. It is a case study of an area of diffuse industrialization, a typical example of what the IRPET [Institute for Economic Planning of the Region of Tuscany] has termed "urbanized countryside." The hypotheses that inspired the survey were developed as part of a program of research into the social characteristics and transformations of this form of development centered especially in the regions of central and northeast Italy. The survey was carried out in 1982 and the early months of 1983, and was based on interviews made with a standardized questionnaire to a sample of blue-collar workers (370 cases), entrepreneurs (100 cases), and various members of the middle classes i.e., farmers, the self-employed, civil servants, and whitecollar workers (200 cases). Alongside other research operations, the survey also included a study of the strategies and forms of interaction of the main institutional representatives of the local political system through interviews with municipal, provincial, and regional leaders. Any case study inevitably raises questions as to the extent to which its results may be generalized. Nonetheless, it is an indispensable method of focusing upon the interrelation between different levels in the social structure. Furthermore, a survey of this type clearly highlights the importance that the local institutional context, both political and social, has for the development of the small firm. From this point of view, the choice of a situation that is highly typical in economic and sociopolitical terms as that of the Valdelsa certainly is accentuates certain trends, but also permits improved analyses of the complex institutional architecture that supports diffuse industrialization. The latto* is not characterized solely by the formation of systems of