Identifying Criteria for Effective Regional Economic Development Organizations in The United States
Creators: name: Berwick, Jody
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2004
Subjects: Regional Technology Strategies

description: Over the past few decades, economic development has been evolving as a movement away from the local recruitment of large company branches and more toward the regional governance of area resources. In its broadest context, regional economic development is the improvement of communities by fully developing the potential of the combined economic, social, cultural, and environmental well-being of its local and surrounding area and its people and by collectively sustaining relationships with the global economy (1). Regional economic development of course principally focuses on the growth of industry and business and the creation of jobs. The establishment of a regional economic development structure to advocate for jobs and investment in a particular area is an important step, indicating support from the involved communities and area businesses and industries and the coordination of government. It is estimated that more than 10,000 Economic Development Organizations (EDOs) conduct economic development activities in the United States (2). These range from government agencies and local community groups to utilities and railroads that work to promote economic development. According to the National Association of Development Organizations (NADO), about 550 of these organizations are classified as Regional Economic Development Organizations (REDOs), which means that the organization manages the umbrella economic development for a multi-jurisdictional area. Metropolitan areas, with their multiple municipalities all within close proximity to each other, led the movement to avoid duplication of services and consolidate their resources through regional coordination. This trend has extended to rural areas where small local organizations are recognizing large benefits from regional cooperation that places them on the map where they previously stood relatively unnoticed by industry. Increasingly, multi-jurisdictional areas (e.g. several adjacent counties with similar goals and common interests) are forming partnerships to initiate their economic development activities. Due to this increased attention paid to regional cooperation, economic development consultants are finding that they must operate on the cutting edge of economic development, promoting progressive regional coordination and cooperation, a focus on industrial clusters, and the importance of technological advancement to improve a region's vitality. This project is constructed to assist one such consulting firm, Regional Technology Strategies, Inc. (RTS)1, in the design and implementation phase of regional economic development organizations.Currently there are no standards for evaluating the effectiveness of REDOs and their corresponding organizational structures. RTS discovered this obstacle in the pursuit of identifying applicable organizational models for regional development. There is, however, a narrow base of documented knowledge about the short history of regional economic development. There are also annual rankings of EDOs in general from several prominent industry sources. The purpose of this paper is to find a solution to the lack of general information on REDOs through the evaluation of the ability of industry recognition to serve as a proxy for REDO effectiveness. It first provides a brief background on REDOs and their importance to the national economy, and then critiques current economic development industry recognition of REDOs by defining the contribution and limitations of assuming such a "market-based" model of effectiveness. The final section of the paper pursues the possibility of including additional measures and qualities to be considered when evaluating the effectiveness of REDOs. This information can be assimilated into an assessment tool for organizing the structure and operations of REDOs in the United States.