Green Industrial Transformation in Manufacturing MSMEs in Umeå : A Co-evolutionary Analysis of Firm-level Agency and Institutional Capacity

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how green industrial transformation among manufacturing micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Umeå, Sweden, co-evolves with local institutional capacity. Most existing work on Sweden’s green transition has focused on large flagship projects, including the Northvolt gigafactory whose collapse in 2025 exposed the limits of that model. Yet around 99% of European firms are MSMEs, and the durability of the transition depends on whether institutional support actually reaches them. The study is a qualitative single-case design drawing on eight semi-structured interviews two with Umeå Municipality, five with manufacturing MSMEs, and one with a large anchor-firm manufacturer analysed through joint thematic coding alongside documentary material. The framework integrates Evolutionary Economic Geography, Regional Innovation Systems, and sustainability transitions with Benner’s (2026) cultural-toolkit perspective, refined to describe co-evolution as a process rather than only its static dimensions. Five themes emerge: the dual face of municipal action; the multi-scalar geography at which firm-side co-evolution actually happens; its asymmetric direction; the cultural register as the hinge through which institutional support is recognised or missed; and procurement, finance and binding regional conditions as the friction surfaces where the process advances or stalls. Tracing five phase-by-phase case sequences, the thesis finds that co-evolution between firms and institutions in midsized cities is multi-scalar, asymmetric, and culturally mediated, running only partly through the local scale. Its contribution is twofold: empirically, it documents how institutional support reaches, and largely fails to reach, the manufacturing MSME tier in one northern city after the collapse of the flagship model, with the firms’ binding institutional relationships running predominantly through national, EU and customer scales rather than the municipal one; theoretically, it relocates the cultural register to the hinge between institutional and firm sides and names the condition of latent fragmentation, in which a dense supply-side architecture coexists with uneven practical access across the firm band. Keywords: green industrial transformation; manufacturing MSMEs; co-evolution; institutional capacity; regional innovation systems; sustainability transitions; cultural toolkit; Umeå; Sweden; mid-sized European cities.