All For One and One For All: Regional Collaboration in Industrial Recruitment Strategies, A Comparative Case Study
Creators: name: Green, Jamaal
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2010

description: The United States as a whole is still adjusting to the restructuring of the global economy that started in the 1960s, accelerated in the seventies and eighties, and runs, seemingly, uncontrolled today. This restructuring has lead to the fragmentation of once dominant, heavily vertically integrated firms and has made it close to impossible for the US to produce many goods as cheaply as those found in other areas of the world. Stagnating wages, a gutting of middle management positions, as well as rampant job loss in traditional manufacturing sectors characterize this restructuring. The gutting of these traditional manufacturing sectors not only decimated the cities of the Midwest and Rustbelt but it also severely affected many manufacturing economies in the south, including North Carolina. North Carolina saw thousands of textile and furniture jobs leave the state as manufacturers either failed or moved their factories overseas to cheaper production sites. This loss of work crippled many counties in the central and western parts of the state. Wilkes, Ashe, and Allegheny counties have taken this brutal experience to heart and have formed a regional strategy to make themselves more competitive and adaptive to the changing global marketplace. They do this by collaborating with each other on workforce development, education, recruitment, and retention. The eastern region of North Carolina, also decimated by losses due to global competition, responded in their own fashion. The region took a revolutionary and innovative step in the founding of the Global TransPark. The TransPark lies within the 13- county Eastern North Carolina Economic Development region. The TransPark is designed to be a comprehensive advanced manufacturing and transportation hub that takes advantage of the eastern region's proximity to major highway, rails, water, and air transport infrastructure. Both of these initiatives are novel and bold and speak to the rising necessity of regional planning and economic development in order for firms and regions to remain competitive and growing in this new globalized market place. That being said, there has been mixed success in these individual efforts in successfully recruiting new companies and maintaining the political will to keep these regional efforts. The TransPark, only recently successful in attracting some larger-sized firms, was initially deemed a disappointment in its ability to successfully attract new firms, as well as suffering from political infighting and a break down in the collaborative spirit. Whereas, in Wilkes, Ashe, and Allegheny counties there has been mixed success in attracting some firms to the region while simultaneously strengthening the bonds amongst the counties. This study will focus primarily on Wilkes, Ashe, and Allegheny counties and their Northwest North Carolina Advanced Materials Cluster comparing its structure and efforts with those of the early years of the Global Transpark.