Abstract

ENTREPRENEURSHIP & REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 5 (1993), 25-37 Italian industrial dynamics from the 1970s to the 1980s: some reflections on entrepreneurial activity7 ANDREA FUMAGALLI* and GIULIANO MUSSA'TI* * *Research Center on Entrepreneurship 'Furio Cicogna' and Department of Economics and Quantitative Methods, University of Pavia; and **Professor of Economics, University of Rome Tor Vergata and Bocconi University, Italy 1. Introduction In the mid-1970s, especially after the first oil crisis, the role played in the Italian industrial structure by small and medium-sized firms increased in a relevant way. A wide debate on the causes and origins of the phenomenon characterized not only the Italian but also the international economic literature during the 1980s.' The main part of the empirical and theoretical research can be summarized by highlighting three points of view, according to the considered field: 1 from an economic point of view there are two differing main interpretations. On pa.norama is one hand, the increased weight of small firms in the industrial considered a structural datum and, hence, a permanent and imposing tendency towards a new intiustrial organization based on a higher ievel of flexibility due to the spread of the new information technologies; on the other, the more important role