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Research Question: This paper is a case study of the relocation of the Boeing Co. corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago in 2001. In March 2001, Boeing announced that it had short-listed three regions-Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Denver-for its new headquarters location and planned to finalize its site selection process in a matter of weeks. This paper examines how each of the three regions responded to Boeing’s announcement, focusing in particular on questions of regional cohesion. We address three principal questions: How effectively did regions coordinate their recruitment efforts? What explains variations in the cohesiveness of regional recruitment efforts? What kind of regional learning took place in each city as a result of the recruitment process? Methodology: The paper relies principally on two data sources. First, semi-structured personal interviews were conducted with economic development practitioners active in the Boeing recruitment effort in each of the three cities. In addition, newspaper articles covering the recruitment process in each city were reviewed. Content analysis was used to determine how media sources in each city portrayed the cohesiveness of recruitment efforts, both in their home cities and in the other two locations. Key Findings: We found considerable variation in the culture of cooperation around economic development in the three regions. We conclude that regional recruitment efforts were most cohesive where regional cooperation around economic development was institutionalized and where the civic sector played a leadership role in fostering cooperation. Recruitment efforts were more fragmented where cooperation was largely ad-hoc and overseen principally by the public sector. Implications: The study contributes to the literatures on new regionalism and business location. It suggests that regional institution building and strong civic sector participation are important in facilitating regional cooperation around corporate recruitment efforts. Related Published Research: Pierce, N., with Johnson, C., & Hall, J.S. (1993). Citistates: How urban America can prosper in a competitive world. Washington, DC: Seven Locks Press. Dodge, W.R. (1996). Regional excellence: Governing together to compete globally and flourish locally. Washington, DC: National League of Cities. Hershberg, T. (1996). Regional cooperation: Strategies and incentives for global competitiveness and urban reform. National Civic Review, 85(2), 25-31. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable research has sought to explain variation in firms' employment practices, as well as to identify the effects of those practices on a range of organizational and worker outcomes, while a separate literature has investigated determinants of workforce demographic composition within employing organizations. The current paper integrates and builds upon both of these lines of work while contributing to growing scholarship on the conditions of lower-skill, hourly employment. Using data from interviews with managers of 16 sites of two national restaurant chains in suburban Seattle and Chicago, we examined how workforce attributes - specifically the gender and family caregiver composition of waitstaffs - intersected with preferred job qualifications as well as employer practices for wages, fringe benefits, and staffing and scheduling. Male waiters were most heavily concentrated in the chain providing comparatively generous benefits and input into scheduling, while the greatest proportion of women were found in the chain that offered few or no benefits and little scheduling control. Sites with the most waiter-caregivers came from both chains, but mostly suburban Seattle rather than Chicago, aligning with a policy context assuring a higher minimum wage with no deductions for tips. Paralleling those findings, we observed that managers in especially male-heavy settings stressed intellectual and experience qualifications for waiter positions, while within more female and dependent caregiver employing sites, factors such as personality and "good hygiene" were prioritized. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]