Partnerships, trusts, local productive arrangements, interorganizational networks and other variations have been formulated, studied and evaluated as configurations capable to promote the development of localities, in different scales. Under different theoretical approaches and in the varied areas of the Administration, these forms are understood, usually, as adjusted to foment the development in the context of the globalization. However, with exceptions, the local development has been taken for granted as natural and automatic resulted of those initiatives or the new institucional arrangements moved by them. This article explores elements theoretician-empiricists formulated by Celso Furtado and Milton Santos to search an alternative of agreement and praxiological content to the concept of local development. To substantiate the reflections, it presents part of a referring empirical work to the formation of the local productive arrangement of information technology and communication of Pernambuco. It finishes with the fidgets and the implications for the organizational studies, resultants of the inspiration searched in those authors.
Territorial development; Local productive arrangement; Underdevelopment; Interorganizational networks