A moving target: rethinking industrial recruitment in an era of growing economic uncertainty

Abstract

Industrial recruitment is often portrayed by economic development scholars as an inferior or ‘second-best’ strategy to those that promote ‘home-grown’ enterprise. But this characterization overlooks improvements to industry recruitment that state and local agencies have adopted in recent decades and the underlying factors that contribute to this effort. Drawing on two case studies of strategic industrial recruitment in the U.S. South, this paper makes the case for industrial recruitment as embedded practice—rooted in placespecific contexts, adaptive and open to change, and governed by a range of institutional actors. The result is both a more strategic approach to local industrial recruitment, and also one designed to complement—not undermine—other local economic development practices.