Oligarchic place leadership and resistance to change in industrial districts

The capability of local productive systems to react positively to disruptive challenges, entering new paths of development, depends on the presence of supportive local institutions,organizationsand actors.A quite recent literature points out the key support given to path transformation by sets of local actors expressing a place leadership (PL). With a focus on industrial districts (IDs), characterized by a manufacturing specialization and a decentralized business organization based on SMEs, the paper aims at exploring conditions of a PLresisting change. We develop a conceptual frame that enablesthe identification of three different types of PL: open PL, corporate PL, and oligarchic PL. Specifically, oligarchic PLallowsto reflect onmodels of developments and structural conditionswhere changes to meet disruptive challengescould beintentionally obstructed. In this regard, the paper provides someconsiderations andexampleson how a model deviating from the canonical ID of local developmentand expressing an oligarchicPLcould drivelocal productive systems through lock-in conditions.