Paper info

The Potential Influence of Local Government Strategies on Regional Business Networks

Ronald Beckett

The paper was published at the 20th IMP-conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2004.

For a variety of reasons some Australian local governments are seeking toencourage targeted types of business activity within their governance area,often in conjunction with adjacent local governments. This createsnetworks supportive of some, but not all business activities in the regionthat is additional to pre-existing business and market networks. Thequestions considered in this paper are ? what kinds of strategies can beadopted by Local Government that will result in the desired outcomes, andwhat capabilities does local government need. The paper is presented fromthe viewpoint of one particular Local Government Authority (which wehave called LCC), and presents examples of initiatives it is takingIt is argued that the intention of LCC is to enhance regional economiccapital, knowledge capital and social capital to enable its residentbusinesses to compete more comprehensively. In comparing the currentLCC position with the experiences of other similar regional initiativesreported in the literature, it is suggested that LCC is at the start of ajourney, that it will need to have well communicated measures ofprogress, encourage the emergence of community leadership, and perhapsmove towards a different network governance model.