Few studies exist of the role of business and professional services (BPS) in second city regions that have experienced significant levels of deindustrialisation. The case for enhancing our understanding of the dynamics of BPS firms in the economy of a second city suggests that it is timely to...

This article explores the regional geography of professional, information and intellectual services in Norway. Norway is used as one way of critiquing the global cities literature by exploring the multiple ways in which knowledge intensive services are created and consumed outside global cities....

Manufacturing firms located in high-cost production locations have developed a series of complex inimitability strategies in response to intensive competition from low-cost producers. This paper draws upon the resource-based view of the firm to explore inimitability, as a strategy firms deploy...

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...

Production processes are becoming increasingly more complicated as firms develop corporate strategies that are designed to increase profitability or capture market share. The focus of this article is on manufacturing companies (3M and Boeing) and on understanding the social organisation of...

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...

This paper provides a critical analysis of European service research. The paper reviews the state of service research in 1991 and critically evaluates the subsequent two decades of academic research. The paper then identifies key research challenges that must be addressed over the next decade....

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...