Community-Based Restructuring?

The author examines change agents, agendas, and processes involved in community-based efforts to promote collaborative manufacturing in Cleveland, Athens, and Toledo, Ohio. The goals are to redefine relationships of firms with competitors, customers, and community entities and to remake institutions so as to support small firms. Contributing factors include the threat that communities will be relegated to the periphery, new pressures on small firms to design products for diverse customers, the importation of network models by state governments, and the ability of community-based organizations to translate these models to resonate with local constituencies.