ABSTRACT
The notion of “business climate” is here brought up as a metaphor that both challenges researchers and is widely applied in practical political contexts as a determinant of entrepreneurship and regional development. While local and global climate conditions as physical phenomena are expected to influence one another, the business climate is considered both as parameter and as variable. On the one hand, nations and supra-nation structures, such as the EU, are expected to be able to heavily influence the local/regional business climate. On the other hand, it is argued that only climate that is expected to be enacted from below and from the inside, that is co-created by those concerned, will sustain. To regions and other localities that have been successful a favourable business climate is often ascribed, as benefiting from cultural, social institutional endowments which are amplified by spontaneous, sometimes also intentional, interaction between the business community and the broader social context wherein it is embedded. A reason for enquiring into the local/regional business climate is its symbolic potential for framing collective actions aiming at economic development, whether spontaneous or deliberate.
