Is too small always bad? the role of place attachment in harnessing location advantages

Amato Stefano (), Shahab Zare () and Lattanzi Nicola ()
Additional contact information
Amato Stefano: University of Trento
Shahab Zare: University of Milano Bicocca
Lattanzi Nicola: IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 2024, vol. 20, issue 1, No 12, 265-308

Abstract: Abstract Despite the economic significance of micro-enterprises, the empirical evidence on the contextual factors unlocking their growth potential is somewhat scant. This study pitches into this stream of research by linking micro-enterprises, agglomeration economies, and place attachment literature. Specifically, this research explores whether micro-enterprises benefit the most from the location in agglomerations and from having a local manager in charge of the business capturing the connections to the immediate surroundings. By drawing on secondary data from Italian manufacturing companies, our findings show that micro-enterprises are less productive than the larger ones and that having a local manager further exacerbates the productivity gap. However, the influence of place attachment on productivity reverts to positive when micro-enterprises dwell in agglomerated areas, where they are better positioned to capitalize on localization economies. Our study unveils the ambivalent effect of place attachment on productivity, allowing micro-enterprises mainly to achieve higher productivity gains from agglomerations. Theoretical contributions to contextualizing entrepreneurship research and micro-enterprises growth as well as policy and managerial implications are discussed.

Keywords: Micro-enterprises; Productivity; Agglomeration economies; Place attachment; Manufacturing; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11365-023-00907-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:intemj:v:20:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s11365-023-00907-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... urship/journal/11365

DOI: 10.1007/s11365-023-00907-9

Access Statistics for this article

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal is currently edited by Salvador Roig

More articles in International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().