Between continuity and change in local restructuring: Facilitating path creation in local development in Vennesla, Norway

Abstract

The article discusses an alternative restructuring process in Vennesla, a municipality in southern Norway. As part of the local discourse about the decline of workplaces in manufacturing industries and the threatened closure of a symbolic factory, municipal politicians and administration mobilized support and applied to the national government for funding for a restructuring project. The project failed to receive funding and an alternative restructuring process was launched, aiming to support the local capacity for collective action and learning to support restructuring. An action research project became central in the work of reorganizing local development. For the analyses, central concepts from evolutionary economic geography were adopted to address the role of ‘path dependency’ in regional development. The presented case is an example of how a development coalition, engaged in a learning process to create new paths for an industrial community, bridged the gap between continuity and change in the evolution of economic activity through a focus on action and reflection.