Francesco Garibaldo is director of the Institute for Labour in Bologna (Italy). He worked for several years for trade unions, and was director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research in Rome from 1992 to 1998. He published widely in the fields of organization, governance and regional development policies, production decentralisation, and SME networking. Specific studies were carried out in the automobile, machine tools, and information technology industry. The editor is director of the international network «Regional and Local Development of Work and Labour.