Can Local Actors Foster a More Inclusive and Sustainable Model of Economic Development? The Role of Business Improvement Areas in the “New” Industrial Policy

A growing body of evidence links differing managerial practices, specifically ones addressing environmental sustainability and the management of people, to variations in performance observed across firms and countries. Firms (and by extension jurisdictions) that invest in better environmental policies (sustainability) and that empower workers (inclusivity) tend to outperform, over the long run, those that do not. Despite the gains associated with these inclusive and sustainable management techniques, large differences in the adoption of even the most basic management practices persist. We premise this article on an institution that can lower the costs of gaining best practice knowledge and help in the successful transfer of tacit knowledge—the business improvement association (BIA). After presenting evidence of managerial best practices, we look at what BIAs are currently doing (as well as what they can do) for the small- to medium-sized, independently owned firms that constitute their membership. We go on to show that local BIA efforts, occurring as they do within large urban centres and targeting firms often neglected in national-level approaches, can do more than even ‘new’ industrial policies advocated by some policy makers to help foster a more inclusive and sustainable form of economic development