Institutions, place leadership and public entrepreneurship: Reinterpreting the economic development of Nottingham

Abstract

This paper develops a conceptual framework that draws on three discrete bodies of research: institutional perspectives on economic development, place leadership and public entrepreneurship. This framework is used to reinterpret the recent economic development of Nottingham (a second-tier regional city in the UK) with a particular focus on attempts to respond to the challenges of economic restructuring and deindustrialisation over the long term. Examples of public entrepreneurship are seen as forms of recursive agency through which institutions are established and reconstituted in ways that may facilitate adaptation and path creation in local economic development.