RICHARDSON R., BELT V. and MARSHALL N. (2000) Taking calls to Newcastle: the regional implications of the growth in call centres, Reg. Studies 34, 357-369. The growth of white-collar jobs in call centres has been a significant feature of the last decade. Local and regional economic development...

Recent years have seen the growth of pre-employment training initiatives focusing on developing generic skills amongst the long-term unemployed in an attempt to ensure their access to jobs in the service economy. This article is concerned with the effectiveness of such training, focusing...

This paper examines the demutualisation of the British building societies, the trend during the 1990s for these mutual financial institutions run on behalf of their members and without external shareholders to convert to public limited companies. Demutualisation resulted from cultural change...

The authors examine the impact of the remote delivery of financial services on the branch network of British building societies. The current phase of branch-network rationalisation in the financial sector in Europe and North America is argued in the academic literature to be the inevitable...

Over the last decade, the potential of Advanced Communications (ACs) to contribute to regional economic development has been of increasing interest to policy makers. Recent policy in Europe has focused particularly on how ACs can contribute to job creation in peripheral or less favoured regions,...

The localism agenda in England, to the extent that it has been followed through, relies on the increasingly free availability of government data for its success. The availability of this open government data, however, solves nothing: as many writers have pointed out, such data needs to be...

This paper attempts to reflect critically on the role which telephone call centers might play in the economic development of rural places in the 'information age', drawing mainly on a case study of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. It argues that although call center employment tends mainly...

D<sc>awley</sc> S., M<sc>arshall</sc> N., P<sc>ike</sc> A., P<sc>ollard</sc> J. and T<sc>omaney</sc> J. Continuity and evolution in an old industrial region: the labour market dynamics of the rise and fall of Northern Rock, <italic>Regional Studies</italic>. The Northern Rock mortgage bank was a high-profile casualty of the credit crunch in 2007. An...

The Northern Rock mortgage bank was a high profile casualty of the credit crunch in 2007. A longitudinal investigation focused on the redundancy and resettlement of employees at the bank provides a case study of the labour market impact of the banking crisis on the North East of England. An...