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Globally, climate change represents the most significant threat to the environment and socio-economic development, endangering lives and livelihoods. Within the UN's current 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), climate action is explicitly covered under Goal 13, "to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts". This perspective considers how to re-frame the SDGs and their successor towards mainstreaming climate action within the targets and indicators of all the development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating a circular economy (CE) is considered central to solving problems like climate change and resource depletion. In this context, the concept of global destruction networks was developed to better theorise using waste in new production. However, CE advocates also seek to avoid waste production by extending products' lives. These efforts occur within what we term waste reduction networks. Examining how these two sets of networks intersect allows a fuller understanding of the CE's emergent geographies. We analyse 17 European and US clothing firms focussed on value creation through waste minimisation to illustrate our argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the processes behind legitimacy building and its role in new path creation and the path transformation or the 'de-locking' of an established industry. We use a mixed-methods approach and focus on the emergence of 'New Space' or Space 2.0 in the UK, a new-to-the-world industry, with radically different products and/or conventions. Legitimation of new product categories is essential to enable future adoption by regulators and consumers. Our findings suggest that this is not a linear process but involves interlayering, or complex feedback loops, between three distinct types of legitimacy building: regulatory, normative, and cognitive. Failure in some of these feedback loops, for example, problems with altering regulatory legitimacy, would prevent the formation of new industrial pathways with significant implications for the development of new-to-the-world and new-to-region industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply a two-step data driven approach to determine the causal impact of the clean air zone (CAZ) policy on air quality in Birmingham, UK. Levels of NO2, NOx and PM2.5 before and after CAZ implementation were collected from automatic air quality monitoring sites both within and outside the CAZ. We apply a unique combination of two recent methods: (1) a random forest machine learning method to strip out the effects of meteorological conditions on air pollution levels, and then (2) the Augmented Synthetic Control Method (ASCM) on the de-weathered air pollution data to isolate the causal effect of the CAZ. We find that, during the first year following the formal policy implementation, the CAZ led to significant but modest reductions of NO2 and NOX levels measured at the roadside within (up to 3.4% and 5.4% of NO2 and NOX, respectively) and outside (up to 6.6% and 11.9%) the zone, with no detectable changes at the urban background site outside the CAZ. No significant impacts of the CAZ were found on concentrations of fine particulates (PM2.5). Our analysis demonstrates the short-term effectiveness of CAZ in reducing concentrations of NO2 and NOX. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with a new way to interpret agglomeration-centric conceptions in urban theory, acknowledging the diversity of local contexts, of places and various scales by developing the concept of Urban Value Chains (UVC). It explores how the stretching of UVCs engages with the hegemony of agglomerations; this is framed within accounts of city-regionalist orthodoxy and with an emphasis on concentrations of opportunity in core city environments founded upon concentrations of localized resources. To do so, we move beyond the value chain literature's focus on logistics and manufacturing processes to explore processes related to human interactions and activities within and beyond urban settings. By examining post-pandemic agglomeration dynamics through the lens of UVCs, we re-interpret the importance of cities in the future but also demonstrate that future cities may re-enforce the role of distant places, putting them within the reach of UVCs through extended value-creation stretching processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The book "Offshore: exploring the worlds of global outsourcing" by Jamie Peck examines the complex nature of outsourcing and offshoring in the context of globalization. The author argues that offshoring is not simply about finding cheaper labor, but involves a range of motivations and factors such as accessing skilled labor, tax advantages, and proximity to resources. The book also highlights the need for a more balanced and inclusive perspective on outsourcing and offshoring, with input from academics in both the Global North and Global South. The analysis concludes with a discussion of the new generation of automation techniques and the importance of decarbonization and continuity of supply in global value chains. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores the areas that require attention from urban planners and built-environment experts to reduce pathogen transmission pathways following the COVID-19 pandemic. Topics discussed include existing approaches to health in cities, integrated approach to healthy urbanisms in the post-pandemic context, and the importance of adaptation and the use of temporary solutions to deliver socio-economic outcomes.

COVID-19 forced universities to engage in rapid improvisation and adoption of online learning and teaching. This paper explores "real-time blended" learning in which online students are taught simultaneously with students who are experiencing proximate learning. Two cliques could develop with those learning online becoming observers rather than participants in an active learning process. This paper is based on action-based research to develop an inclusive approach to simultaneous teaching of proximate and online students. This approach includes alterations in classroom layout, the equipment used, facilitating varying modes of social interaction and the role of communication. Effective teaching requires continual minor modifications to teaching design and delivery. This represents an ambidextrous approach to teaching in which teachers focus on the immediate co-creation of student experiences, but also identify cues which are used to adjust the ways in which they engage with a student cohort over the course of delivering a module. Module evaluation becomes an ongoing process in which alterations are made in real-time and to subsequent learning encounters with students. The paper evaluates student performance and concludes that the approach went some way towards ensuring equality of the student experience between those learning online and those proximate with the lecturer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological innovation continues to play a fundamental role in disrupting many industries, but the impacts of digital innovation on accountancy and its effect on firms and individuals remain somewhat overlooked. Nevertheless, technological innovation is transforming accountancy work and business models as firms react to competition and regulatory restrictions. The analysis of sixty semi-structured interviews with UK accounting firms reveals how the adoption of new technology and alterations in regulations impacts on accounting practices. In turn, this research raises questions about the nature of professional occupations, the deskilling of accountancy and colonization of new service areas, challenging the extant conceptualisation of knowledge-intensive services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that planning in the Global South needs to be embedded within a more complex and systemic framework based on understanding cities' functions and transformations, at both local and regional levels, whilst advocating for and incorporating informal and temporary dynamics. This is to differentiate between two competing processes: formal planning and citizen-led place-making, here considered as a form of reactive alternative-substitute place-making that occurs when there is no available alternative. The paper calls for a better integration of such impermanent, adaptable, temporary and alternative forms of place-making into the planning process for regional futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic closed university campuses forcing rapid improvisation and adoption of online teaching. This paper explores the experience of converting three modules from proximate to online learning delivery in March and May 2020. This process was facilitated by reflective practice to support a process of improvisation as a buffering response to the pandemic. This paper distinguishes between the development of Distance Learning programmes compared to rapid adoption of online learning. Shifting to complete online teaching involves a process by which the lecturer's role transitions towards the curation of online and offline student experiences. This includes facilitating and blending extensive and intensive online learning experiences. Extensive involves the selection and curation of online learning support bundles. This requires the creation of learning roadmaps to facilitate student learning. Intensive revolves around online engagement between academics and students and takes two forms: shallow as involving a limited dialogue with students and deep which involves a co-creation process between students and lecturers. Online learning provides opportunities to adapt learning experiences in real-time. The paper evaluates the shift to online practice from the students' and academics' perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matching skills supply and demand is critical for economic growth, competitiveness and inclusiveness. Yet, measuring skills is difficult. This paper develops an approach for measuring the gap between demand and supply of skills at the local level in the UK West Midlands region. It uses qualifications as a proxy for skills. By comparing the projected supply of qualifications with the forecast demand for qualifications from occupational forecasts, the analysis reveals significant skill mismatches with potential to constrain regional growth potential. Policy implications for connecting skills, transport and housing policy as part of local industrial strategies are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic represents a major disturbance that has rippled across the world's population, states, economy, and central nervous system or global production networks transforming the traditional roles of states, firms, individuals/consumers, and geographies of production. This paper offers a critical and context‐based approach to understanding globalization and localization by challenging the conceptualization of 'value' and 'risk' within the current global production networks framework as well as identifying key operational strategies in risk management and national security. An analysis of the adaptation strategies of the GPNs of 91 companies identifies the role played by four different forms of value in configuring production networks. This is to balance 'economic value' with non‐price‐based sources of value and alternative values. The analysis underscores the critical role of the state in ensuring national and human security as well as its increasing power as a key actor in GPNs and the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown measures implemented by the United Kingdom government from 23 March 2020 led to unprecedented adaptations from individuals and communities including places of worship, their clergy and congregations. This paper through a multi‐disciplinary dialogue between human geography and theology explores the interrelations between place, space and the spiritual. It identifies the bricolage mechanisms that were developed rapidly by churches to shift towards providing virtual church services. This was an uncommon practice by Christian denominations in the UK. COVID‐19 changed the rules requiring new practices to emerge resulting in a new form of infrasecular space to emerge. Such rapid transformations through the provision of online services and virtual embeddedness blurred the lines between sacred and secular spaces. During virtual services, the minister's home is temporally linked to the homes of congregants forming an intersacred space. Homes and spaces within homes are transformed into temporary sacred spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SMEs make a major contribution to the economy of cities and places. The relationship between firms and place is increasingly explained through the application of city-based externality models. Such explanations have limited validity in a number of contexts. One of these is in the economies of small- and medium-sized towns and communities (SMST). Whilst convention has sought to apply core-periphery explanations to the functioning of firms within SMSTs, the economies of SMSTs and entrepreneurial processes of SME embedding, adaptation and survival in such places are more complex. This paper explores these entrepreneurial processes in the context of manufacturing firms in five SMSTs in the West Midlands, UK. The paper uses interview data to understand the relationships between SMEs and place through the development of successive and evolving linked enterprise structures. Through these linked enterprise structures, SMEs engage in a process of adaptive embeddedness, resulting in new resource configurations through fluid iterations of structural, emotional, and circumstantial embeddedness. This paper is the first to identify and explore these different forms of embeddedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role that product- and firm-centered heritage plays as an advantage-creating resource and competitive dynamic in contributing to minimizing risks for firms in global production networks (GPN). Research on the management of risk has been identified as critical for developing an understanding of the underlying determinants of GPN. In the satellite industry, key risks relate to launch, extreme conditions in outer space, and challenges concerning repair. These risks are minimized by the development and management of heritage. Heritage is a reputational asset founded on proven technology embedded in products and/or firm-based relationships that have values or associations that accumulate and are passed down over time. The risks associated with the space sector are extreme; however, heritage also plays an important but unacknowledged role in other economic sectors, including shipping, nuclear energy, rail, medical technologies, and aviation. The article adds to the economic geography literature in three ways. First, it highlights the central role that regulators and insurance providers play in defining market imperatives for GPN. Second, it identifies and explores heritage as a reputational asset, providing both a source of competitiveness and a competitive dynamic influencing firm-based routines and interfirm relationships. Third, it provides the first in-depth analysis of the satellite industry in the context of heritage—a sector that impacts on the everyday activities of government agencies, citizens, and firms. This analysis of heritage is based on eighty in-depth interviews with representatives from across the UK space sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are places of incremental decision-making involving complex negotiations that produce accumulations of urban assets and path dependency. The ownership, control and co-ordination of urban land and its transformation into an investment asset is a key link between economic interests and urban activities that come together in site-based “financialisation fixes”. A financialisation fix combines a development solution for a specific site with a financial model creating a locally embedded asset. This article examines how land tenure (freehold versus leasehold rights) influences the transformation of a city and the role a local authority plays in the financial management of land assets. This includes an analysis of the application of financialisation to urban assets and the first tax increment financing scheme of 1875. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to a growing body of work on labour market migration to the UK from the new Member States (NMS) of the European Union, particularly the migration of Polish nationals to the UK, drawing attention to the weaknesses of existing data sets which attempt to quantify these migration flows and in particular to map the geographical distribution of migrants. The analysis of Worker Registration Scheme ( WRS) and National Insurance Number ( NINo) allocation data demonstrates that NMS migration has focused on urban and rural locales rather than having a predominantly rural or 'peripheral' area bias. The paper also argues that the discrepancies between WRS and NINo data potentially reveal a 'hidden' geography of self-employment and entrepreneurial activity among NMS migrants which merits further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1966, the UK economy has experienced a continual process of restructuring as manufacturing firms attempted to respond to new forms of competition, alterations in consumer demand and technological developments. Accounts of the British economy since the 1960s highlight deindustrialisation and the transfer of production and employment to newly industrialised regions. The UK is still an important location for manufacturing, but manufacturing has become increasingly mechanised and knowledge-intensive. This article draws upon evolutionary economics to explore the ways in which British manufacturers of carpets and technical textiles have responded to globalisation through the adoption or development of new routines, resources, capabilities, manufacturing strategies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cost competitiveness remains a significant element of firms' advantage in developed economies. Input costs, particularly nonlabor costs, are important factors underlying the competitive position of firms that are competing both domestically and internationally. Energy costs are becoming an increasing threat to the long-term survival of firms because of their more volatile nature. The distinct geographic structure of energy prices combines both international markets and intranational policies and supply structures. It is vital to understand how firms manage the risk that is generated from such a complex input. This article explores the adjustment process of intermediate metal-processing firms in the West Midlands U. K. and their wider supply chain to the energy price risk and its interaction with existing long-term adjustments to the pressure of globalization. Formal and informal relational agreements between customers and suppliers are identified as critical factors in determining the capacity of supplier firms to transfer energy price risks to their customers and to adapt to energy-related pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Critical infrastructure' generally refers to significant pieces of plant and equipment, such as power stations and motorways. High population densities in cities, and the increasing interconnectedness of the services and supply chains that sustain them, mean local infrastructure is equally important. Local infrastructure must be able to cope with system shocks, whether from natural hazards, terrorism or catastrophic failures. Engineering design plays a major part in achieving this, but shocks will occur that overwhelm even the most conservative design. Local infrastructure must therefore be able to adapt to, and recover from, shocks: it must be resilient. Local infrastructure has evolved with little consideration for resilience of the interconnected system as a whole, whereas resilience has been the subject of much research in many other systems. This paper explores the lessons that local infrastructure can learn from such research by reviewing literature related to resilience of ecological, economic, physical infrastructure, community/social and government systems. A critical analysis highlights the factors affecting resilience and different approaches that need to be taken into account when attempting to model infrastructure at a local scale. The ultimate aim is to provide an evidence base on which to build resilience into various infrastructures and direct future local infrastructure resilience research in an age of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the challenge of measuring the extent of immigration to the UK following EU Accession in 2004, and argues that the most commonly used databases (UK Census, Labour Force Survey and Worker Registration Scheme) can be supplemented by the National Insurance Number (NINo) Allocations database, and demonstrates the utility of this data for future research by outlining the geography of immigration derived from NINo. The paper makes three important contributions through the thorough analysis of a data source currently underexploited in migration studies; first that the NINo, when used as a indicator of migration per se offers some interesting insights into migration in the UK, and secondly that as a tool for comprehensively measuring the registration of migrants working legally in the UK, it offers a means of constructing a internal geography of (legal) labour migration, as the paper demonstrates. Third, the analysis also identifies self-employment as a potentially important missing driver behind EU Accession Migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a special dossier that explores the changing economic geographies of service firms and functions. The emphasis is on exploring recent developments in the theory of the firm and what this means for understanding how complex production systems are organised in time and space. There are three important building blocks: exploring interactions between the literatures of economic geography and international business; exploring the global sourcing of services and a critical analysis of clusters. This introduction addresses some of the tensions that exist between research that emphasises the importance of social networks in production systems and the contractual and legal structures that constrain the activities of firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the activities of two UK-based property development companies that have integrated sustainability into their business models as a source of competitive advantage in response to an evolving public sector sustainability agenda. These companies have combined different individual competencies and developed new routines and business practices that provide them with distinctiveness in the marketplace. These new routines represent entrepreneurial behaviour constructed around the identification of profitable market niches based on values derived from incorporating sustainability into private sector business models. This incorporation requires the development of a framework for balancing sustainability and related value systems against more mainstream concerns with maximizing profitability. This paper identifies this framework and explores the ways in which these firms have developed a discursive formation of profit and value that is used to balance the tensions that exist in a business model formulated around balancing a double bottom line. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past thirty years have seen major shifts and improvements in manufacturing productivity, bringing greater output but fewer jobs. As a result, manufacturing is now less visible in “post-industrial” societies. Nevertheless, manufacturing still matters in developed market economies but our understanding of manufacturing has failed to evolve with developments in the management and organization of production processes. This paper explores the lock industry in the West Midlands (UK), a traditional low-tech manufacturing sector. West Midlands lock companies that produced standardized, mass-produced products have experienced intensive competition from low-cost producers. Many of these firms have downsized their operations in the UK. Nevertheless, this is only one response to intensified competition. Lock firms located in the West Midlands are unable to compete on price and have shifted away from the production of mass-produced locks to concentrate on high value-added niche markets. The firms have developed inimitability strategies based around design, expertise, specialization, customization and nearness to market that assist them in maintaining their revenue and profit streams. Niche manufacturers have been far less susceptible and relatively immune to foreign competition and they continue to diversify product ranges by targeting specialist end-users. The emphasis is on producing high-quality locks in small batches that can be produced just-in-time to meet customers' requirements. The continued survival of these lock firms is based upon a strategy that includes the development of product-based competitive advantage combined with locational advantage and supported by efficient, responsive and customer-focused manufacturing processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the knowledge economy develops and intensifies, increasing pressure is being placed on universities to help in local economic capacity building to meet the challenges of globalization. This article explores this expanded university role from the perspective of the provision of policy analysis and advice they can provide. It proposes the use of mixed-methods analysis, combining informed empirical modeling and “intensive” case studies to reveal local economic processes. An analysis of Australia's regional problems to exemplify this approach highlights the significance of “enterprising human capital” in promoting regional economic growth and suggests a policy prescription that includes enterprising education. In contradistinction, using U.K. evidence, the pitfalls of entrepreneurship education are outlined as it relates to the role of universities in local economic capacity building. The study calls for dialogue to bring about radical rethinking of policy analysis, advice, and the role universities can play in local economic capacity building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the economically developed world, over 75 percent of all jobs involve some form of service work. Over the last 30 years, there has been a dramatic growth in business and professional services (BPS) or those firms that provide “creative” intermediate inputs into the activities of client companies. BPS firms have a double impact on regional economic performance: they add value in their own right but also create productivity improvements in client companies. This article explores the development of a BPS-focused regional economic development policy in the West Midlands, United Kingdom. Developing a policy framework for BPS is problematic as the heterogeneous nature of BPS activities means that no single lobbying group exists to represent their interests. The West Midlands has tried to overcome this difficulty by creating subregional networking organizations and, more recently, by developing a policy approach that attempts to enhance the added value BPS firms provide to their clients. This represents a major, but as yet untested, development in policy intervention as it recognizes the complex interactions that occur between BPS firms and their clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some of the key features of the ‘second’ global shift or offshoring of a range of service functions from America and Europe to countries like India and China. Service offshoring or global sourcing is perceived by the media, policy-making communities and trade unions as a significant threat to existing and future service employment in developed market economies. This paper explores two issues. First, it explores the growth of call centres and data-processing warehouses in India and elsewhere as strategies that are being used to develop a new international spatial division of service labour based on blended delivery systems. Second, it explores the impact that the second global shift is having on service operators living in India. Service work is a hybrid form of work that contains within it various types of emotional labour. Emotional labour is usually understood to be implicated in face-to-face encounters between service producers and consumers. The second global shift, however, involves distanciated emotional labour in which firms located in developed market economies encourage foreign workers to alter the ways in which they project their identities. The offshoring of services to India and China encourages call centre operators based in India and China to become American or English at night and Indian or Chinese during the day. Unlike the first global shift, the geographies of the second global shift are partially determined by a country's colonial heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ways in which industrial design services are organized, produced and consumed by Norwegian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This includes exploring the geographies of this performance in terms of how consumers and producers of design expertise organize their activities. In addition, the paper identifies seven different ways in which client firms utilize industrial design to develop or retain competitive advantage. The paper combines empirical data with the development of a theoretical contribution to the fields of product creation, enterprise competitiveness and the globalization of production. It draws on case studies of Norwegian firms of designers, as well as client firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the ways in which geography and place-based images and meaning are incorporated into products and business models. Such incorporation may be the result of a conscious process of image and identity construction in which designers deliberately exploit local, regional, urban/rural, and national constructions of place and nation. The article examines the consequences of incorporating place-based labels into products, and how geography is expressed in design services as a way of affecting consumer perceptions of products. Place through product and product through place relationships are used by firms to create place-based identities for their products that provide competitive advantage in the global marketplace. This protects niche producers from foreign competition as the identities and value of their products are related to place and quality rather than price advantages. The article distinguishes between placeless products that are targeted at all markets and those that deliberately exploit place-based associations and identities. Firms exploiting place-based associations connect themselves and their products to the traditions/histories/cultures of a particular place. The article is based on detailed in-depth interviews with Norwegian manufacturing companies and designers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores the growth and geography of Community Development Loan Funds (CDLFs) in the UK. CDLFs usually operate locally to overcome financial exclusion by providing a mechanism that enables wider social inclusion in disadvantaged areas. The article uses two cases studies of CDLFs to show how these alternative financial institutions balance the tension between profitability versus social objectives. CDLFs are 'alternative' financial institutions as their business model is based on alternative discursive formations of profitability related to value. Combining these variables produces a complex uneven regional geography of access; complex as local CDLF availability may still imply that organizations experience financial exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews the European literature on innovation by drawing upon specially commissioned reports written by academics located in six countries. The innovation literature is classified into four types: technologist, service-orientated, integrative and theoretical. Each of these types is explored. One of the major findings is that different countries and researchers are at different stages of this life cycle approach to the literature. It is also suggested that the integrative approach is an exciting opportunity for developing the research agenda in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes two contributions to the literature on producer services. First, the 'knowledge combinational' problem of small firms is identified and explored in relation to the interplay of forms of internal and external expertise and knowledge. Second, the role geographic distance plays in a company's decision to employ a particular consultant is explored. The importance, in specific situations, of forms of dislocated expertise or knowledge is identified. By this is meant external expertise that is removed from the client's local social milieu. The article is based on detailed case studies of two small Norwegian companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A person's image incorporates three principal elements: how you look, sound and present yourself. Alterations in the world of work have increased the importance of image in the work place and have created a demand for a new form of recipe knowledge — impression management. This has encouraged the formation of specialist image consultancy companies, as well as the development of new techniques of image construction and management. This article provides an analysis of the image consultancy industry in the United Kingdom. It explores the geography of the industry, motivations for establishing an image consultancy firm, the networks consultants develop and the methods of client acquisition. The results of a postal survey of image consultants are reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traces the construction and circulation of the investment category of emerging markets. Reflection on the geographies contained in the category; Trace of networks of information, movement and command that connect fund managers and analysts in global financial centers; Basis of the distinctiveness of emerging market economies.

This paper goes some way towards redressing the lack of geographical literature on charity through exploring the geography of the British domestic charitable sector. The size and geography of the third sector is outlined, followed by an analysis of how almshouses can be understood as inherently geographical and deeply embedded in local social networks of inclusion as well as exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon empirical research into the image consultancy industry in the United Kingdom. This industry is becoming increasingly important as a provider of knowledge and expertise to employers and individuals. We suggest that the literature on new forms of service employment (emotional labour and hybrid forms of work) has neglected to explore well-paid professional employees. We argue that this group is equally implicated in societal pressures to conform to conventional heterosexual images of femininity and masculinity. Pressures to conform do not have to come from management, but from professional bodies, the media and clients. Image consultancy provides one way of encouraging employees to alter their image as the advice can be packaged as independent of the employer and professional. We conclude that the new profession of image consultancy is more about gender than image. Consultants are selling codified knowledge for the construction of particularly socially accepted or preferred forms of bodily identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the annual report on the progress of research into service activities in 1998 in Europe. Differences between the service research agendas; Important gaps in the service literature; Absence of comparative pan-European service research.

Describes a first-year tutorial to introduce students to techniques of self-reflection of their A level experience of geography. Descriptions of A level; Purpose of the tutorial; Evaluation and implications of the tutorial.

Since the late 1970s a reorganisation of the production process has occurred as a consequence of international competition, technological change and the forces of recession. One aspect of this change has been an increase in the knowledge content of both goods and services. Associated with this change is the incorporation of business service knowledge into the management and production processes of small and medium‐sized enterprises in the United Kingdom. Such knowledge is provided either direct from the private sector or indirectly via government policy initiatives. In 1992 the Business Link network was launched in England to provide a national chain of one‐slop advice shops for the local provision of business support services to small firms. This article identifies three flaws with this policy initiative. First, each Business Link company has a local monopoly which results in the differential availability and quality of supplied services. Secondly, measures to evaluate the operation of Business Link companies function to determine and control its activities. Thirdly, the mechanisms which some Business Link companies use to identify ‘growth’ companies are aids to ‘efficient’ administration rather than mechanisms to stimulate local economic development. A situation is developing in England in which winning and losing areas are developing based around the provision (nature, type, quality) of Business Link advice services. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What is built and where it is built is largely determined by the activities and perceptions of global investment capital. Comparatively limited work has been undertaken into the property markets of regional cities as well as into the process of building obsolescence, refurbishment and valorisation. This paper explores the dynamics of the property development process in relation to land rent theory in marginal development locations. It argues that the debate over land rent theory, between academics who want to retain the canonical dogma and those who focus on landownership, is misplaced. What is required is a combination of these approaches. Increasingly, what is built and where it is built reflects the varied nature of property interests, as well as the actions of the local and national state. The argument is supported by a case study of Nottingham's office market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 1980, the United Kingdom has experienced a dramatic growth in firms and employment in information-intensive business services, such as management consultancy and market research. This article reports the results of the first substantial nation-wide investigation into the nature and causes of small professional business service firm growth in Britain, undertaken in 1991. It reveals marked differences in the characteristics, markets and competitive requirements of such firms, compared with small manufacturing firms. The demand for their services comes predominantly from large companies, and is more focussed on financial and other services and government. But small firms are also making increasing use of business services. Specialised expertise, reputation and educational and professional qualifications are essential prerequisites for the establishment of new business service firms. Their success is also being enhanced by increasing use of informal networking, collaborative partnerships, and subcontracting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary. What is built and where it is built is largely determined by the activities and perceptions of global investment capital. Comparatively limited work has been undertaken into the property markets of regional cities as well as into the process of building obsolescence, refurbishment and valorisation. This paper explores the dynamics of the property development process in relation to land rent theory in marginal development locations. It argues that the debate over land rent theory, between academics who want to retain the canonical dogma and those who focus on landownership, is misplaced. What is required is a combination of these approaches. Increasingly, what is built and where it is built reflects the varied nature of property interests, as well as the actions of the local and national state. The argument is supported by a case study of Nottingham's office market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1990s recession, the UK experienced a dramatic growth in employment in information‐intensive business firms. This paper explores this growth with reference to small management consultancy and market research firms. Business service firms continued to be established and to grow during the recession because of three related attributes: professional expertise, an existing reputation and a network of client contacts. These attributes are related to the theoretical work of Granovetter (1973; 1982; 1985) who argues that “weak ties” operate to connect different groups of people together. The implications of these attributes for local economic development are considered. Success for all companies at the level of the local economy will be partially dependent on efficient and effective use of available business service expertise. The three attributes make it impossible to develop successful mechanisms to encourage the formation of business service companies in areas with underdeveloped service infrastructure. Mechanisms, however, may be developed at the local level to encourage the establishment of “weak ties” between local companies and regional and national providers of business service expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]