The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to explore to what extent being located in a territory is value-relevant for a company. Second, to understand if a company is aware of, and how it can sustain, the territorial tangible and intangible assets present in the economic area in which it is located. Design/methodology/approach – The study presents an empirical multiple case-study, investigating ten mid-/large-sized Italian companies in manufacturing sectors.\ud
The results indicate that the sampled manufacturing companies are intertwined with the environment in which they are embedded, both in their home country and in host ones. The domestic territorial capital has provided, and still provides, enterprises with workers endowed with the necessary technical skills that they can have great difficulty in finding in other places. In turn, companies support territorial capital generation through their activities
This article investigates how the ownership of firms (affiliates of foreign multinational firms, or uni-national firms) affects their internal workforce composition. We consider this issue empirically by adopting a novel database on the workforce composition of companies operating in the manufacturing industry in north-east Italy. The workforce composition (in terms of skill level, gender and the less investigated characteristics of age and nationality) of affiliates of foreign multinational enterprises (FMNs) are compared with a counterfactual of uni-national firms, constructed using propensity score matching. Consistent with previous studies, the results report that FMNs recruit a larger number of highly-skilled workers. Our main findings show that FMNs employ a lower number of foreign and less experienced (young) workers. The employment of native and more experienced workers in FMNs seems to suggest that foreign companies use domestic 'inherited' stock of manufacturing knowledge and skills. By using this stock, they contribute to sustaining its development.
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