The 2008 crash has left all the established economic doctrines - equilibrium models, real business cycles, disequilibria models - in disarray. Part of the problem is due to Smith’s "veil of ignorance": individuals unknowingly pursue society’s interest and, as a result, have no clue as to the macroeconomic effects of their actions: witness the Keynes and Leontief multipliers, the concept of value added, fiat money, Engel’s law and technical progress, to name but a few of the macrofoundations of microeconomics. A good viewpoint to take bearings anew lies in comparing the post-Great Depression institutions with those emerging from Thatcher and Reagan’s economic policies: deregulation, exogenous vs. endoge- nous money, shadow banking vs. Volcker’s Rule. Very simply, the banks, whose lending determined deposits after Roosevelt, and were a public service became private enterprises whose deposits determine lending. These underlay the great moderation preceding 2006, and the subsequent crash.

The Economic Institutions of Capitalism

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

Understanding and conceptualizing the complexities of the contemporary global economy is a challenging but vitally important task. In this article, we critically evaluate the potential of one interpretive framework—the global production networks (GPN) perspective—for analysing the global economy and its impacts on territorial development. After situating the approach in relation to other cognate chain/network approaches, the article proceeds to review and evaluate a number of underdeveloped areas that need to be understood and incorporated more fully if the framework is to deliver on its early potential. The article concludes with a consideration of the key research issues facing work in this area.

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Global production networks: realizing the potential

Recent literature concerning regional development has placed significant emphasis on local institutional structures and their capacity to ‘hold down’ the global. Conversely, work on inter-firm networks – such as the global commodity chain approach – has highlighted the significance of the organizational structures of global firms’ production systems and their relation to industrial upgrading. In this paper, drawing upon a global production networks perspective, we conceptualize the connections between ‘globalizing’ processes, as embodied in the production networks of transnational corporations, and regional development in specific territorial formations. We delimit the ‘strategic coupling’ of the global production networks of firms and regional economies which ultimately drives regional development through the processes of value creation, enhancement and capture. In doing so, we stress the multi-scalarity of the forces and processes underlying regional development, and thus do not privilege one particular geographical scale. By way of illustration, we introduce an example drawn from recent research into global production networks in East Asia and Europe. The example profiles the investments of car manufacturer BMW in Eastern Bavaria, Germany and Rayong, Thailand, and considers their implications for regional development.

Globalizing regional development: aglobal production networks perspective

This book opens a fresh chapter in the debate on local enterprise clusters and their strategies for upgrading in the global economy. The authors employ a novel conceptual framework in their research on industrial clusters in Europe, Latin America and Asia and provide new perspectives and insights for researchers and policymakers alike.

Governance in global value chains

This paper has two main aims. Firstly to conceptualize the production networks of the video games industry through an examination of its evolution into a multi-million dollar industry. Secondly, to use the video games industry to demonstrate the utility of Global Production Network approaches to understanding the geographically uneven impacts of globalization processes. In particular, three key notions of value, power and embeddedness are used to reveal the most powerful actors in the production network, how they maintain and exercise their power, and how the organization of production is manipulated as a result. It is argued that while hardware production is organized by console manufacturers using truly global sourcing strategies, the production of software is far more complex. In fact, software production networks are bounded within three major economic regions: Western Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. This paper seeks to explain how and why this has occurred. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Video games production networks: value capture, power relations and embeddedness

Acknowledgements 1. Services Worlds 2. Changing Perspectives on the Service Economy 3. From Networks to New Forms of Regulation 4. Service Knowledge and the Production Process 5. The Rise and Role of Producer Services 6. Service Work 7. Information and Communications Technology and Services: Opportunities and Impacts 8. Consuming Services: Circuits of Knowledge, Stages and Performances 9. Service Spaces 10. Services and Globalisation 11. Global Services: from Trade to Foreign Direct Investment 12. Service Worlds Revisited References

Service Worlds: People, Organisations, Technologies

Very little is currently known about the globalization of the temporary staffing industry, a strategically significant sector given its role in promulgating wider labor market flexibility. This article starts to rectify this research lacuna in four ways: by conceptualizing the international expansion of temporary staffing and comparing it to other business service sectors, by identifying and mapping the top twenty transnational staffing agencies, by offering a typology of the leading transnational agencies based on their functional and geographic characteristics, and by charting a research agenda for future work on this sector. ∗This article draws on a wider project exploring the globalization of the temporary staffing industry. We thank the editor and four referees for their helpful and constructive comments. We also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the U.K.'s Economic and Social Research Council (Grant no: R000-23-0616). Kevin Ward acknowledges the support of the Leverhulme Trust...

Mapping the Globalization of the Temporary Staffing Industry

Introduction: Fieldwork for Human Geographers PART ONE: APPROACHING THE FIELD Getting the Most out of Fieldwork Justifying the Cost: Your Degree and Your Job Prospects Before You Go: Research Design and Preparation Ethics: Positioning Yourself and Encountering Others Working in Groups and Travelling Together PART TWO: METHODS AND CONTEXTS Reading the Landscape: Describing and Interpreting Field Sites Interviewing for Fieldwork Participant Observation and Participatory Geographies How to Be an Explorer: Rediscovering Your Curiosity

Fieldwork for Human Geography

Continuing advances in digital technology are producing widespread changes in work and its management, particularly where work is performed away from an employer’s premises through remote working. ...

Jennifer Johns

Papers

Video games production networks: value capture, power relations and embeddedness

Service Worlds: People, Organisations, Technologies

Mapping the Globalization of the Temporary Staffing Industry

Fieldwork for Human Geography

Recontextualising remote working and its HRM in the digital economy: An integrated framework for theory and practice