bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Spatial Configuration of the Firm and the Management of Sunk Costs*
Authors: Clark Gordon L. , Wrigley Neil
Published: August 2010

Abstract:In this paper we explain why the modern corporation may persist with a decentralized system of plants differentiated by the vintage of capital and the style of management. Our goal is to show how and why firms are, at once, structured by the inherited configuration of capital and also reproduce differentiation within and outside the corporation. To do so, we use concepts and principles drawn from modern financial theory to show that a spatially differentiated configuration of production may have advantages for the firm in terms of the risk‐adjusted flow of revenue, strategic options in relation to actual and potential competitors, and the management of sunk costs. Our argument focuses on the modern corporation, characterized by a separation between ownership and control as well as a dependence upon internal stakeholders for the realization of planned revenue and output targets. We argue that our framework can help theorists account for the persistence of interfirm and interindustry differences in capital profiles, despite a common presumption in favor of convergence around a simple, efficient industry standard. While the paper is an exercise in theory, it is based upon our previously published studies of corporate restructuring in manufacturing and retail industries in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Limits to the Imagineered City: Sociospatial Polarization in Orlando
Authors: Archer Kevin
Published: August 2010

Abstract: Postindustrial city development has become increasingly privatized, in addition to being based more and more on “imagineering” place for sale to footloose producers and consumers. As a result, cities have taken on many of the characteristics generally associated with theme parks. Themed built environments envelop highly selective communities essentially isolated from others, both socially and spatially. I argue that these sociospatial results of Disneyesque urban development do not bode well for urban social relations. I substantiate this claim by documenting the evolution of sociospatial isolation and polarization in Orlando, Florida, which has grown quite rapidly since the arrival of Disney World in the early 1970s. This “other” Orlando is proving to be ever more difficult to imagineer away and, indeed, represents the social limits to Disneyesque development.
The Women Were Always Welcome at Clark*
Authors: Monk Janice
Published: August 2010

Abstract: In absolute and relative terms, since its founding in 1921, the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University has played a major role in educating women geographers. This article examines the period from the 1920s to the early 1970s, when Clark was most distinctive in its representation of women in comparison to other institutions. I examine patterns of enrollment, how the women came to choose Clark, their experiences of the institution and of the job market, and the regional, national, and international connections of Clark women. I pay attention to the women's perspectives and to their relationships with faculty and alumni, especially founding director Wallace Atwood, questioning whether Ellen Churchill Semple's presence on the Clark faculty in its first decade had any positive effect on women students' relations to Clark. The themes are analyzed in relation to currents in the institution, the discipline, American higher education, and gender roles in U.S. society. Key issues that emerge are the occupational segregation within the discipline before the 1960s, which led to women being associated primarily with teacher training institutions and, to some extent, women's colleges; Atwood's commitment to geographic education; the importance of Clark networks; and the women's valuing of a collaborative atmosphere and of field education.
Remittances and Inequality: A Question of Migration Stage and Geographic Scale*
Authors: Jones Richard C.
Published: August 2010

Abstract: Over the past decade, the benefits from economic globalization have bypassed most developing countries, and as a result international wage‐labor migration has taken on new importance. The impact of remittances on migrant origins is still, however, a subject of considerable debate. Some researchers find that remittances tend to increase income inequalities, whereas others find just the opposite—even, upon occasion, when they are writing about the same place. This study offers a spatiotemporal perspective in which the stage of migration and the spatial scale at which inequalities are measured are conceptualized as controls that help explain these divergent views. I describe a case study, based on 1988 household survey data collected in central Zacatecas state, Mexico. Interfamilial inequalities are found first to decrease and then to increase as a place's migration experience deepens. Throughout this experience, however, rural incomes improve relative to urban ones, since remittances are targeted to the predominantly rural areas of origin.
Contradictions of Capitalist Industrialization in East Asia: A Critique of “Flying Geese” Theories of Development
Authors: Hart‐Landsberg Martin , Burkett Paul
Published: August 2010

Abstract:According to most development economists, the economic “miracle” of the ASEAN‐3, following the earlier experiences of Japan and the Asian NIEs, demonstrates the benefits of export‐led growth. This conclusion is shared by neoliberals and structural‐institutionalists, despite disagreements over the role of state intervention. Both views are represented in increasingly influential “flying geese” theories, which credit regional economic dynamics, in particular those shaped by Japanese foreign direct investment, for the regional advance. Our critique of this perspective starts by showing how the successive waves of Japanese foreign direct investment represented responses by Japanese capital to the class‐based and competitive contradictions of Japan's accumulation process. The recent expansion of NIE‐based foreign direct investment in the ASEAN‐3 is likewise a response to the contradictions of export‐led growth, although in the NIEs' case these contradictions were accentuated by economic dependency on Japanese capital. Contrary to celebratory flying geese perspectives, we find that this hierarchical regionalization of investment and production, and resulting intensification of competitiveness pressures, does not offer sustainable improvements in work and living conditions in Japan, the NIEs, or the ASEAN‐3. However, by creating a more regionalized class structure in which core, semiperipheral, and peripheral area workers are subjected to a common set of competitiveness pressures, East Asian industrialization creates the potential for a regionalization and strengthening of worker/community resistance to capitalism.
Taking on the CosmoCorps? Experiments in Transnational Labor Organization*
Authors: Wills Jane
Published: August 2010

Abstract:This paper revisits the argument that globalization necessarily undermines trade union organization. In addition to heightened competition for investment and the threat of social dumping, the internationalization of capital can also bring workers into closer contact with each other. Working class nationalism and internationalism are both possible outcomes of economic globalization. By exploring the history of labor internationalism and the current development of European Works Councils (EWCs), this paper urges caution in assuming that globalizationnecessarilythreatens labor organization. Contemporary experience suggests that, in some instances, the changing world economy poses new opportunities for workers to organize across national boundaries. I draw on preliminary research into the development of EWCs in the United Kingdom to suggest that they offer real opportunities for new forms of labor internationalism, and as such, EWCs are emblematic of the possibilities and problems facing workers as they seek to organize in a globalizing world.
Slow Convergence? The New Endogenous Growth Theory and Regional Development*
Authors: Martin Ron , Sunley Peter
Published: August 2010

Abstract: In economics, interest has revived in economic growth, especially in long‐term convergence in per capita incomes and output between countries. This mainly empirical debate has promoted the development of endogenous growth theory, which seeks to move beyond conventional neoclassical theory by treating as endogenous those factors—particularly technological change and human capital— relegated as exogenous by neoclassical growth models. The economists at the forefront of the formulation of endogenous growth theory and the new growth empirics have begun to use long‐term regional growth patterns to test and develop their ideas. Their analyses suggest that regional convergence is a slow and discontinuous process. In this paper we consider whether endogenous growth theory can help to explain this finding. We argue that endogenous growth theory has important regional implications, but also major limitations when applied to a regional context.

endogenous growth,
Beyond Ethnic Enclaves: Location Strategies of Chinese Producer Service Firms in Los Angeles*
Authors: Zhou Yu
Published: August 2010

Abstract: Ethnic enclaves are often not only the main residential areas for ethnic populations but also the prime locations for their businesses. As more and more ethnic enterprises locate outside such enclaves, the spatial pattern of ethnic business becomes more complex. To understand the spatial pattern of ethnic business, I argue that we need to go beyond treating “ethnic” as the only adjective. Drawing from the literature on industrial networks and territorial agglomeration, I examine the location patterns of ethnic producer services and their interfirm transaction networks. Chinese‐owned firms in three types of producer services of Los Angeles County were selected: accounting, banking, and computer distribution. I collected information on networks and locations through surveys, interviews, and directories. This research found that location strategies are extremely important for ethnic entrepreneurs to exploit their market niches in all three sectors. While Chinese firms show markedly different spatial patterns from their non‐Chinese counterparts, each type of producer service also differs from the others in spatial pattern. Accounting offices and bank branches concentrate in the Chinese central business district because of their Chinese‐client‐oriented network. A number of larger bank headquarters find downtown Los Angeles a favorable location because they are seeking international recognition and closer integration with mainstream financial institutions. Computer firms locate at the fringe of Chinese‐concentrated areas and cluster with other Chinese computer distributors to participate in a product pool so that parts can be exchanged faster. I conclude that the spatial organization of ethnic business needs to be understood as the outcome of interaction between cultural and industrial identities of enterprises.

ethnic enclaves,
Where Do Tigers Sleep at Night? The State's Role in Housing Policy in South Korea and Singapore*
Authors: Park Bae‐Gyoon
Published: August 2010

Abstract: A statist perspective holds that the autonomous state has enabled East Asian NICs, notably South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, to achieve economic success. I challenge this perspective by showing that sociopolitical relations between the state and other social actors have deeply affected state actions in housing development in South Korea and Singapore. I demonstrate that the state role in housing is influenced by the nature of the political coalition the state has established with other social groups to promote economic growth. In South Korea, an exclusive developmental coalition between the state and large capitalists forced the state to minimize its role in housing provision and severely reduced state autonomy in controlling real estate speculation. In contrast, the state in Singapore has been proactive in providing public housing and controlling landownership on the basis of a balanced relation between growth and populist coalitions. This study suggests that the state role in national development needs to be understood in the context of political processes among social actors, such as political coalitions between the state and other social actors. The state can succeed in fostering social development only by establishing the proper political relations among social actors, such as the state, capital, and labor.

housing policy,
Vertical Integration in a Lean Supply Chain: Brazilian Automobile Component Parts*
Authors: HUallacháin Breandán Ó , Wasserman David
Published: August 2010

Abstract:Brazil's automobile component parts industry shows that vertical integration and scale economies endure within flexible production systems. Recent neoliberal economic reforms propelled vehicle assemblers to adopt flexible modes of production and subcontract component manufacturing. However, transactional hazards in supply chains escalated as first‐tier subsystem assemblers had to rely on small, opportunistic, and inefficient parts makers. Large tier one suppliers purchased existing parts makers and invested in greenfield facilities to service both new flexibly organized vehicle assembly plants in southern Brazil and Argentina and restructured assembly plants in the traditional automobile complex of São Paulo. We focus on Dana Corporation, Bradesco Bank, and British Tyre and Rubber Corporation—firms that assemble chasses, engines, and body subsystems, respectively. These companies dominate their segment of the parts industry, delivering subsystems to a growing network of flexible vehicle assembly plants throughout Brazil. Large‐batch parts production, subsystem assembly by a few major multinational tier one suppliers, and ownership consolidation underscore the continued role of vertical integration and scale economies in automobile production chains.
China's Changing Regional Disparities during the Reform Period*
Authors: Ying Long Gen
Published: August 2010

Abstract: I examine regional disparities in China during the reform period (1978–94) based on the latest measures of provincial per capita GDP. Results reveal a “U‐shaped” pattern in regional inequality over time. Regional inequality in per capita GDP among the 30 provinces of China diminished as reforms progressed until 1990, after which it started widening. This diminishing trend was due to a significant decline in income inequality among provinces in the coastal region. A further test indicates that an increase in per capita GDP in the southern coastal provinces is the main reason for declining regional inequality in China during the early reform period (1978–90). Rising GDP in the southern coastal belt also led to widening regional disparities between coastal and interior regions after 1978. As a result, regional inequality in per capita GDP among the 30 provinces has worsened since 1990. From 1992 to 1994, regional disparities between coastal and interior provinces became more significant than the traditional North‐South inequality in the Chinese space economy within the context of uneven regional development.
The Geography of Privatization in China, 1978–1996*
Authors: Han Sun Sheng , Pannell Clifton W.
Published: August 2010

Abstract:Economic reform in China since the late 1970s has led to remarkable economic growth and many changes in China's economic geography. Privatization, an important process in deregulating a centrally controlled economy, has been a significant component of China's economic reform and restructuring. Privatization also has significant spatial consequences linked to its role in China's regional economic development. With data from policy documents and state statistical sources, we use descriptive statistics and correlation analysis to describe, map, analyze, and explain the changing spatial dimensions of China's privatization process. A complex pattern of spatial variation in privatization has emerged related to the recent historical legacy of socialist development and new economic opportunities in different regions. Empirical analysis shows that unemployment was influential to privatization in the late 1970s, but in the 1990s, strong state employment in the commercial sector has been associated with the growth of the urban private sector. Moreover, it is geographically significant that the stronger the private sector at the provincial level, the faster the province's economic growth. Findings on the spatial variation and changes of privatization enhance our understanding of the complex processes of regional development under way in China today and can contribute to the formulation of innovative regional development policies.
The Quest for Distinction: A Reappraisal of the Rural Labor Process in Kheda District (Gujarat), India*
Authors: Gidwani Vinay
Published: August 2010

Abstract: In this article I examine how the rural labor process is constitutive of social identity, particularly status, by harnessing empirical evidence from Kheda District, Gujarat, and other parts of India. Emphasis is on the labor practices of the dominant Lewa Patel caste, and only secondarily on the practices of other caste groups. My central claim is that the labor process is a primary arena in which the quest for social distinction occurs and that the primary source of distinction is the ability to withdraw family labor power from the commoditized labor circuit. In this paper I seek to deepen conventional understandings of the labor process within economic geography, agrarian studies, and mainstream economics.
The Paradoxes of Environmental Policy and Resource Management in Reform‐Era China*
Authors: Muldavin Joshua
Published: August 2010

Abstract:Over the last 5,000 years serious environmental problems—deforestation, desertification, erosion, and widespread pollution of air, land, and water—have prevailed throughout most of China, brought about by a diverse set of social and political contexts. In this paper I focus on an enduring contradiction associated with the post‐1978 reforms, namely accelerated environmental resource degradation in rural areas amid unprecedented national economic growth. Declining entitlements to assets and social capital in China's rural village populations are a crucial aspect of altered state‐peasant relations, as these are increasingly mediated by the market during China's transition to a hybrid economy. This has resulted in changing patterns of resource use, impacting both the environment and peasant livelihoods. A brief assessment of China's postrevolutionary environmental policy and management practices provides the context for detailed case studies in Henan Province. These examples highlight the relationship between political‐economic changes and environmental policy and management. Contrary to reform rhetoric, rural peasants' embracing of reform policies does not necessarily optimize their welfare or promote sustainable use of resources. The case studies reveal alternative pathways for villages, ones that ought to be brought into the policy debate spotlight.
Firms in Territories: A Relational Perspective*
Authors: Dicken Peter , Malmberg Anders
Published: August 2010

Abstract: The role of space and place in shaping the transformation of firms and industries and the impact of such transformations on the wider processes of territorial development at local, regional, national, and global scales are basic research issues in economic geography. Such analyses tend to be compartmentalized, focusing on a specific economic activity or on a specific territory, rather than on the relationships between them. It is difficult simultaneously to conceptualize economic activities (including such phenomena as firms, industries, and other types of systems of networked economic activity), on the one hand, and territorially defined economies, on the other. In this paper, we address the interconnections between economic activities and territories through an exploration of the mutually constitutive relationships between firms and territories: the firm‐territory nexus. The focus of our analysis is the nexus of three major dimensions—firms, industrial systems, and territories—embedded in turn in the overall macro dimension of governance systems.
Population Growth and the Environment in Africa: Local Informal Institutions, the Missing Link*
Authors: Mazzucato Valentina , Niemeijer David
Published: August 2010

Abstract: Population and environment debates regarding Africa, whether Malthusian or Boserupian in nature, focus on population levels as the driving force behind the relationship between environment and society. This article argues, instead, that how people adjust to their rise in numbers is more important than are population levels. It focuses on the role of local informal institutions, such as land tenure systems, but also on customs, norms, and networks, and their change over time in mediating the relationship between people and the environment. The article is based on fieldwork conducted between 1995 and 1998 in the Sahelian and Sudano‐Sahelian zones of Africa, as well as on a review of colonial documents pertaining to the area written in the first half of the twentieth century. The article concludes that adaptations made to local, informal institutions within the past century have enabled an environmentally sustainable land use within the context of a rising population and growing scarcity of natural resources.
Locating Globalization: Feminist (Re)readings of the Subjects and Spaces of Globalization*
Authors: Nagar Richa , Lawson Victoria , McDowell Linda , Hanson Susan
Published: August 2010

Abstract: The literatures on economic globalization and feminist understandings of global processes have largely remained separate. In this article, our goal is to bring them into productive conversation so that research on globalization can benefit from feminist engagements with globalization. In the first section, which focuses on the conceptual challenges of bringing the economic globalization literature into conversation with feminist analysis, we identify several key exclusions in that literature and propose parallel inclusions that a feminist reading of globalization suggests. Our suggested inclusions relate to the spaces, scales, subjects, and forms of work that research on economic globalization has largely neglected. The second section takes up several key themes in the large body of feminist research on global economic processes, which is also largely absent from the economic globalization literature: the gendering of work, gender and structural adjustment programs, and mobility and diaspora. In the final section, we address the implications of feminist epistemologies and methodologies for research on economic globalization. Here we argue for grounded, collaborative studies that incorporate perspectives of the south as well as the north and that construct understandings of place and the local, as well as space and general global processes; we point to the coconstitution of different geographic scales and highlight the need for studies that cut across them. The article demonstrates how a feminist analysis of globalization entails far more than recognizing the importance of gender; it requires substantial rethinking of how to conceptualize, study, and act in relation to economic globalization.
The Limits to Globalization Theory: A Geographic Perspective on Global Economic Change*
Authors: Yeung Henry Wai‐chung
Published: August 2010

Abstract: The nature of globalization and global economic change has been a subject of immense academic research during the past two decades. The Janus face of globalization, however, continues to obfuscate our understanding of its complex processes and alleged geographic outcomes. In this article, I theorize on the indispensable role of geography in conceptualizing economic globalization. I argue that economic globalization is an inherently geographic phenomenon in relation to the transcendence and switchability of geographic scales and discursive practices as sociospatial constructions. Given its complex spatiality, economic globalization is more a phenomenon in need of explanations than a universal cause of empirically observable outcomes in the so‐called globalization theory. To illustrate my theoretical claims, I analyze the complex interrelationships between globalization processes and the recent Asian economic crisis. Some implications for future globalization research in geography are offered.
Political Economies of Scale: Fast Policy, Interscalar Relations, and Neoliberal Workfare*
Authors: Peck Jamie
Published: August 2010

Abstract: Taking as its point of departure recent debates on the theoretical status of scale and rescaling in political‐economic geography, this article explores the scalar politics of neoliberal workfare. This tendentially hegemonic form of neoliberal social and labor‐market policy combines objectives of the dismantling of welfare and the rollback of entitlements with an insistent focus on the activation and enforcement of work. The welfare/workfare restructuring process is an illustration of a deeply politicized and highly dynamic form of regulatory rescaling, based inter alia on the selective appropriation of disembedded local programming models and their purposeful circulation around extralocal policy networks, the dumping of regulatory risks and responsibilities at the local scale and that of the “poor body,” and the complex orchestration of ostensibly decentralized policy regimes by national states and transnational agencies and intermediaries. The rollback of Keynesian‐welfarist institutions at the level of the national state provides the (scaled) context for the emergence of these neoliberalized political forms, but crucially, these forms are also beginning to exhibit their own distinctive dynamics and logics—captured here in terms of an ascendant regime of “fast‐policy” formation. Workfare regimes are not monolithic systems, but dynamic configurations of restless reform, technocratic emulation, and tangled scalar relations. Politically constructed, they are also responsive/subject to (scaled) processes of local policy failure and social contestation. Scale and scale relations certainly matter, then, but in ways that are politically mediated and institutionally specific, rather than theoretically preordained.
Lean Production Systems, Labor Unions, and Greenfield Locations of the Korean New Auto Assembly Plants and Their Suppliers
Authors: Lee Yong‐Sook
Published: August 2010

Abstract: This article investigates why Korean auto assembly firms introduced “lean production systems” and chose greenfield locations as their new flexible production sites in the 1990s. I show that labor unions are important actors that directly affect firms‘ adoption and location strategies for lean production systems, by means of an analysis of Korean auto firms‘ managerial and locational strategies in response to adversarial labor relations. Korean firms‘ choice of greenfield locations for implementing lean production systems indicates that their desire to procure a malleable labor force is more important than proximity. Korean auto firms‘ decisions to implement Japanese‐style lean production systems and their choice of greenfield locations reflect conflicts between workers and managers. The findings in this article critique the existing literature in economic geography, which is devoid of discussions of workers and labor unions as active geographic agents, from the labor geography point of view.
Social Capital, Collective Action, and Adaptation to Climate Change
Authors: Adger W. Neil
Published: August 2010

Abstract:Future changes in climate pose significant challenges for society, not the least of which is how best to adapt to observed and potential future impacts of these changes to which the world is already committed. Adaptation is a dynamic social process: the ability of societies to adapt is determined, in part, by the ability to act collectively. This article reviews emerging perspectives on collective action and social capital and argues that insights from these areas inform the nature of adaptive capacity and normative prescriptions of policies of adaptation. Specifically, social capital is increasingly understood within economics to have public and private elements, both of which are based on trust, reputation, and reciprocal action. The public‐good aspects of particular forms of social capital are pertinent elements of adaptive capacity in interacting with natural capital and in relation to the performance of institutions that cope with the risks of changes in climate. Case studies are presented of present‐day collective action for coping with extremes in weather in coastal areas in Southeast Asia and of community‐based coastal management in the Caribbean. These cases demonstrate the importance of social capital framing both the public and private institutions of resource management that build resilience in the face of the risks of changes in climate. These cases illustrate, by analogy, the nature of adaptation processes and collective action in adapting to future changes in climate.
Innovation, Time, and Territory: Space and the Business Organization of Dell Computer
Authors: Fields Gary
Published: August 2010

Abstract: Businesses reshape the territorial configuration of economic activity by creating new forms of organization as part of the innovation process. Focusing on the case of Dell Computer, this article builds an argument about the geographic development of economies that is structured around four elements: (1) the firm, (2) the innovation process occurring within the firm, (3) the business organization of the firm, and (4) the territory in which the firm operates and extracts profit. In tracing this route from the enterprise to territory, this article draws upon the notion of “communications revolutions” as a catalyst for the innovative impulse of firms. In adapting to communications revolutions, firms, such as Dell, emerge as innovators by learning to recalibrate the time increments that are expended during the steps of making and marketing products, thereby shifting competition from the product to the processes of capitalist circulation. This recalibration of time results in the creation of process‐driven routines for making profit and a transformation in the organizational arrangements through which firms implement such routines. As firms reinvent forms of organization to implement these time‐based innovative routines, they alter the linkages between adjacent steps in their profit‐making activity. By reorganizing these linkages and changing the nature of business organization, innovative firms reconfigure the territory in which they operate and accumulate. This reconfiguration of territory, however, is not the mechanical result of efficiency criteria. Firms use power over other firms to redeploy the location of activity in their production networks in an effort to achieve time economies and innovative efficiencies.
Producing a Modern Agricultural Frontier: Firms and Cooperatives in Eastern Mato Grosso, Brazil
Authors: Jepson Wendy
Published: August 2010

Abstract: In economic geography, explanations of emerging agricultural frontier regions are dominated by two theoretical perspectives: land‐rent theory and political economy. This article advances current research by applying concepts from new institutional economics to reconcile these models. Drawing from a case of frontier expansion in eastern Mato Grosso state, I focus the debate on an institutional perspective. Two organizations, a colonization firm and an agricultural cooperative, are examined. The combined activities of cooperatives and firms reduced the overall costs of production in regions that are defined by high transactions costs (for example, land‐tenure insecurity, poor links to the market, and imperfect information) and risk. Each organization linked individual farmers to necessary resources for commercial farming (for instance, land, capital, technology, and markets) and provided an organizational context for farmers to respond to land‐tenure conflict and land degradation. The consequence was an increase in the marginal productivity of land, which translated into an expanded commercial agricultural frontier.
Networks, Scale, and Transnational Corporations: The Case of the South Korean Seed Industry
Authors: Kim Sook‐Jin
Published: August 2010

Abstract: In light of recent theoretical scholarship that has incorporated scale with networks perspectives, this article examines the potential of a scalar networks‐based approach to understanding the global strategies and activities of transnational corporations (TNCs), through a comparative case study of two TNCs that were involved in the recent transformation of the South Korean seed industry. The comparative study demonstrates that a foreign TNC's mergers and acquisitions (M&As) of major South Korean seed companies in 1998–1999 in the context of structural adjustment (TNC's material politics of scale) was an outcome of complex relations and the intermingling of various actor‐networks that were embedded in various scales. A domestic TNC's responses to the M&As, on the other hand, illustrate how the TNC's struggle to reshape power relations through a discursive politics of scale enabled it to extend and enrich its networks and power relations with farmers, politicians, the general public, and the government. Material and discursive uses of scale in the business strategies of TNCs are shaped by complex actor‐networks that are embedded in specific sociocultural and institutional contexts and influence new configurations of networks and power relations, and a scalar networks‐based approach helps one understand this complexity of TNCs' activities.
Extraregional Linkages and the Territorial Embeddedness of Multinational Branch Plants: Evidence from the South Tyrol Region in Northeast Italy
Authors: Perkmann Markus
Published: August 2010

Abstract: This article reevaluates the regional embeddedness of multinational manufacturing branch plants in view of recent work on global production networks and extraregional links. It argues that the predominance of extraregional production linkages is not necessarily detrimental to regional economies and that such linkages can even compensate for weak territorial innovations systems in noncore regions. The arguments are supported by a case study of the South Tyrol region of Italy, using firm‐level data from surveys and interviews, complemented by evidence on institutional conditions. The findings suggest that neither the branch plants nor the locally owned manufacturing firms are strongly embedded in the region in terms of material linkages and interorganizational relationships, indicating that the ownership status of firms is not a good predictor of embeddedness. Second, compared to local firms, branch plants are more innovative and hence contribute to a larger degree to regional upgrading processes. Third, South Tyrol's core institutional structures, such as those governing the labor force, play a decisive role in the competitiveness of branch plants and therefore create codependencies that bind these producers to the territory. The results suggest a more differentiated assessment of the role of branch plants within noncore regions.
Fluctuating Rounds of Inward Investment in Peripheral Regions: Semiconductors in the North East of England
Authors: Dawley Stuart
Published: August 2010

Abstract:This article extends economic geography research on foreign direct investment episodes by developing a historically grounded understanding of the socio‐institutional relations that shape and constrain different rounds of (dis)investment by multinational enterprises (MNEs) within a host region. Sensitive to the roles of contextuality, path dependency, and contingency, it argues that the temporal and spatial dynamics of volatile MNE (dis)investment are best tackled using a conceptual framework that accords a full and active role to the agency of the firm and its interrelations with the geographically variable socioinstitutional contexts that produce, regulate, and mediate investment decisions. The framework is used to interpret the brief but fluctuating history of the semiconductor fabrication industry in North Tyneside in the old industrial region of North East England. Within each investment episode, the empirical findings reveal the pivotal power and agency of the corporation in shaping and connecting processes across a variety of scales, places, and times. Contrasting corporate strategies illustrate the dynamic and contingent ways in which home and host national institutional contexts matter in mediating and regulating MNE investment decisions.
Trade and Income Inequality in a Less Developed Country: The Case of Mozambique
Authors: Silva Julie A.
Published: August 2010

Abstract: Although the relationship between international trade and income inequality has been widely studied in developing economies at the national level, less attention has been paid to regional differentiation within those countries. This article examines the differential impacts of trade in two distinct regions in Mozambique: the relatively more developed southern portion and the more isolated region north of the Zambezi River. Despite differences in physical geography and levels of human and physical capital, these two regions are governed by the same trade and economic development policies. The results indicate that the effects of agricultural trade orientation—the degree to which a region's population is involved in the production and sale of cash crops and vegetable crops—on regional inequality are mixed. In southern Mozambique, the orientation toward crops traded within the country (vegetables) has inequality‐increasing effects, whereas in northern Mozambique, the orientation toward internationally exported crops (cash crops) has inequality‐dampening effects. These mixed findings imply a complex relationship between trade and inequality that varies by region and the type of trade. They suggest that regional trade and development policies that take historical, political, and geographic variation within countries into account would be better equipped to address the trade‐related effects on uneven development than would national‐level policy.
Trust, Transactions, and Information Technologies in the U.S. Logistics Industry
Authors: Aoyama Yuko , Ratick Samuel J.
Published: August 2010

Abstract: How does information technology (IT) alter the organizational dynamics in an industry? In this article, we examine changes in competition and interfirm relations in the U.S. logistics industry, particularly whether “trust‐based” interfirm relationships are being substituted by “competition‐based” relationships and the rationale for outsourcing. We also examine how new IT tools and outsourcing interact and how logistics contracts, the size of firms, and knowledge lead to integration or disintegration within the industry. The results of our research demonstrate that while the use of IT tools is widespread, traditional trust‐based relationships exhibit a considerable resilience in the logistics industry. The industry is also undergoing a complex process of restructuring in response to technological change, on the one hand, and the persistence of geographic and functional specialization, on the other hand. The industry's focus on the delivery of high‐quality services, coupled with excess capacity in the industry in the past few years, has contributed to these contradictory trends. As a result, elimination of the middleman has not been as widely observed as expected.
Black Employment, Segregation, and the Social Organization of Metropolitan Labor Markets
Authors: Dickerson Niki T.
Published: August 2010

Abstract: This broad analysis of the employment of blacks in metropolitan areas examines the role of residential segregation in comparison with four other key structural explanations for racial metropolitan inequality: industrial composition, minority concentration, immigration, and the racial disparity in skills. The goal of the analysis was to determine whether the spatial configuration of blacks relative to whites in a metropolitan area influences the employment rates of black men and black women in the context of the structural conditions of the local labor market. The study expanded the analysis of space and work beyond an emphasis on the physical distance between black communities and jobs to a broader conceptualization of residential segregation as a structural feature of the entire metropolitan labor market that is representative of its social organization with regard to race. Using a longitudinal data set of the structural characteristics of the 95 largest U.S. cities from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial censuses, the study used a cross‐sectional analysis of the cities in 2000 and a fixed‐effects analysis to assess the impact of five dimensions of residential segregation and the four other structural factors on the employment of blacks across different labor markets and across time within each labor market. The results revealed that when the other structural characteristics are controlled, the employment rates of blacks are lower in more segregated cities and decrease as cities become more segregated over time. The clustering and evenness dimensions of residential segregation were the most determinative of black employment.
Gaining from Globalization? State Extraterritoriality and Domestic Economic Impacts—The Case of Singapore
Authors: Phelps Nicholas A.
Published: August 2010

Abstract: States have authored elements of globalization—deploying strategies to exert themselves extraterritorially. Such extraterritorial dimensions of state strategy are intimately connected to economic interests—although the economic interests in question and the geographic manifestations of extraterritoriality have varied historically for individual nation‐states and continue to vary among different nation‐states. This article examines one important example of this phenomenon. The rapid industrialization of Singapore at a time of rapid international economic integration has created a unique degree of urgency, depth, and breadth among contemporary state strategies of extraterritoriality. Drawing upon original research on joint‐venture industry and technology parks in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India, the article examines the extent and nature of economic benefits to the Singapore economy leveraged through this particular strategy of extraterritorialization. The modest scale of these benefits confirms both the limits of state strategies that are aimed at, and elite discourses regarding, “gaining from globalization.”
Placing Progress: Contextual Inequality and Immigrant Incorporation in the United States
Authors: Goodwin‐White Jamie
Published: August 2010

This article contributes to the growing body of research on the economic incorporation of immigrants by considering the relative wages of immigrants, the adult children of immigrants, and the U.S.‐born children of U.S. parentage. By disaggregating these three groups racially, comparing entire wage distributions, and comparing the immigrant cities of New York and Los Angeles with the United States overall, it presents a perspective on the complicated contexts of the intergenerational progress of immigrants. In addition to comparing the groups' relative positions in 1990 and 2000, the article decomposes relative wages such that differences in the educational composition of groups can be isolated from residual wage inequality. This research is of interest because consideration of the U.S.‐born or educated children of immigrants invokes questions of social mobility and the persistence of ethnic inequality more generally. The article also contributes to a theoretical debate over place and immigrants' progress by examining the second generation, for whom residence in immigrant cities is often theorized as detrimental to economic incorporation. Finally, it introduces a substantial analysis of local wage structures to questions of immigrants' intergenerational economic progress to a much greater extent than has previously been the case. The results suggest that prospects for immigrants' economic incorporation are geographically specific and should be assessed across multiple generations as a result of the continuing contexts of racial wage inequality
The Effects of Spatial Mobility on the Performance of Firms
Authors: Knoben Joris , Oerlemans L. A. G. (Leon) , Rutten R. P. J. H. (Roel)
Published: August 2010

A considerable body of research has analyzed the impact of a firm's geographic position and levels of organizational and territorial embeddedness on its performance. Generally these studies have assumed that firms are immobile. Research that has focused on the effects of the relocation of firms has treated firms mainly as atomistic actors that can move freely in geographic space and has tended to neglect the influence of changes in a firm's geographic position and level of organizational and territorial embeddedness. We integrated insights from both streams of literature to answer the research question, “What are the effects of relocation on a firm's performance, and what is the influence of a firm's geographic position and its level of organizational and territorial embeddedness on this relationship?” On the basis of our analysis of data from a survey of managers of Dutch automation services firms, we found that the degree of impact of a firm's relocation on its performance depends on the characteristics of the relocation. For example, a move to an urbanized region hampers performance, whereas a move to a research and development‐intensive region fosters a higher level of performance. Furthermore, firms with high levels of organizational embeddedness suffer in the short term from relocation, but benefit in the long run.
The Knot of Contracts: The Corporate Geography of Legacy Costs
Authors: Monk Ashby H. B.
Published: August 2010

Burdensome past commitments are threatening a concentrated group of industries and communities, predominantly in the U.S. Midwest. Beginning with the bankruptcy of Delphi Corporation, this article documents the crisis for “old‐economy firms” with significant legacy costs. To understand the root causes of this legacy crisis, the analysis builds on previous research in economic geography and the results of a widely subscribed and unique “expert opinion” survey highlighting the corporate impacts of defined benefit pensions in the private sector. The result is a conceptual framework that describes the corporate geography of legacy costs: the “knot of contracts.” Specifically, the knot of contracts conceptualizes the role of intergenerational commitments in restricting corporate evolution and innovation, while underscoring time as a central component of the nature of the firm. Developing this framework requires linking microeconomic theories of the firm with the institutional aspects of firms' geographies. While referring to specific cases and proprietary data throughout, the article is principally concerned with understanding legacy costs. In addition, the intent is to uncover managerial and governmental behavior that tightened this knot of contracts and to expose the current managers' attempts to manage their firms through the adverse affects of the knot of contracts. The explanations in this article serve as a useful bridge between the realities faced by firms and their surrounding communities and the more abstract notions of the firm and competitiveness in the context of globalization.