Between close and distanced links: Firm internationalization in a subsea cluster in Western Norway

Karlsen, A. & Nordhus, M. 2011. Between close and distanced links: Firm internationalization in a subsea cluster in Western Norway. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 65, 202–211. ISSN 0029-1951.

The cluster concept has attracted attention from scholars and become increasingly popular in regional politics, as exemplified by The Norwegian Centres of Expertise programme. External linkages of cluster firms have become a concern inspired by the notions ‘local buzz’ and ‘global pipelines’. Viable clusters are dependent on the quality of both internal industrial environment and external linkages. The article focuses on internationalization of SMEs from a cluster perspective and discusses how cluster firms take advantage of different dimensions of proximity in their internationalization endeavours. By applying the industrial network approach, firms’ strategies and positions at different stages of internationalization are integrated in the analysis. The cases are four SMEs located in a ‘subsea cluster’ close to Bergen, Norway. Data were collected through interviews with top managers and observations during cluster-related meetings. The cases differ with regard to size and international experiences. Firms that are highly internationalized rely on cognitive or organizational proximity when they internationalize further. Such firms provide opportunities for other cluster firms. In contrast, less internationalized firms rely on social and institutional types of proximity. As they collaborate with larger and more experienced cluster firms they can skip some of the resource-demanding steps in the internationalizing process.     

中国电子信息产业创新的集群网络模式与演化路径

流空间背景下,多空间尺度网络耦合对创新至关重要已达成学界共识。综合运用区位熵与社会网络分析,识别32个电子信息产业集群,进而基于1985—2015年合作申请发明专利数据,运用卡方检验和Infomap社区发现算法,借助Pajek和ArcGIS等软件,揭示中国电子信息产业创新合作空间模式,探讨创新网络空间组织演化规律。结果表明：① 中国电子信息产业创新合作呈现集群互联的模式,集群区域的创新主体更倾向于同本地和其他集群区域的创新主体合作,这与非集群区域的创新主体结网方式明显不同,印证了关系经济地理学者提出的全球集群网络论断。② 集群创新网络社区的空间组织从位于集群地理边界内,本地化特征显著,演化为超越集群地理边界,呈现等级差异明显的核心-边缘层级式特征,反映出地理邻近对集群主体创新结网影响程度的动态变化。     

经济地理学视角下西方产业集群研究的演进及其新动向

近30年来,西方经济地理学经历了快速、多元的理论转向,产业集群理论则在汲取相关养分的基础上形成了研究焦点和内容的演进,并持续影响着我国产业集群研究的发展与实践。以经济地理学为研究视角,首先梳理20世纪70年代末以来西方产业集群研究内容的发展脉络,将产业集群理论的演进划分为萌芽、发展和深化三个阶段。其次,对进入21世纪后产业集群研究的新动向进行归纳,发现研究焦点主要集中于网络、时间、空间和技术四个维度,同时在研究内容上呈现出四种变化特征和趋势:①从"集群结构"到"集群网络"的网络复杂性;②从"静态集群"到"集群演化"的时间动态性;③从"持久性集群"到"临时性集群"的空间非嵌入性;④从"实体性集群"到"虚拟性集群"的技术互联网性。最后,在此基础上进一步阐述其对我国产业集群研究的影响和启示。     

长三角区域创新集群的技术创新联系特征及影响探究——以新材料产业为例

基于区域创新集群的相关概念辨析,提出基于长三角一体化战略的区域创新集群概念,并通过IncoPat网站获取2000—2017年长三角新材料产业已获授权的发明专利,在刻画新材料区域创新集群技术创新联系特征的基础上,利用二步系统广义矩阵估计（Generalized Method of Moments,GMM）模型测度融入区域创新集群的深度与广度对地方创新集群的影响,得到如下结论：第一,区域创新集群的发展符合“点-轴”发展理论的观点,以上海、南京、杭州等发达地方创新集群为增长极,在空间上率先形成以增长极为节点的发展轴,成为区域创新集群的核心组团。第二,区域创新集群技术创新联系具备“全球-地方”创新网络阐述的多种类型知识交互耦合的特征,在同质性知识交互的基础上,异质性知识的交互同样占据重要地位。第三,当前阶段长三角区域创新集群中核心组团的极化效应大于扩散效应,更易在区域创新集群的建设中获益,并且知识基础的正向调节作用明显。区域创新集群研究尚处于起步阶段,相关研究亟待经济地理学者进一步展开。     

The politics of greening unceded lands in the settler city

ABSTRACT

Urban greening is a buzz term in urban policy and research settings in Australia and elsewhere. In a context of settler colonial urbanism, like Australia, a first fact becomes clear: urban greening is always being practiced on unceded Indigenous lands. Recognising this requires some honest reckoning with how this latest urban policy response perpetuates dispossessory settler-colonial structures. In this paper, we listen to the place-based ontologies of the peoples and lands from where we write to inform understanding the city as an always already Indigenous place – a sovereign Aboriginal City. In so doing, the paper tries to practice a way of creating more truthful and response-able urban knowledge practices. We analyse three distinct areas of scholarly research that are present in the contemporary literature: urban greening and green infrastructure; urban political ecology; and more-than-human cities. When placed in relationship of learning with the sovereign Aboriginal City, our analysis finds that these scholarly domains of urban greening work to re-organise colonial power relations. The paper considers what work the practice and scholarship of ‘urban greening’ might need to do in order to become response-able and learn to learn with Indigenous sovereignties and ontologies.     

Early applications of geographical information systems at the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology

Abstract

The Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE) Digital Cartographic Service provides a range of services to the scientists of ITE (and others) including various techniques within the field of geographical information systems (GIS). This paper discusses work of this type as it is applied to specific ITE projects. The emphasis is very much on GIS applications to ‘real ecological science’ such as the ‘acid water’ problem and the change of forest areas into heathland. Some comments are made on fundamental GIS techniques, their use and limitations. At ITE, GIS applications are growing out of an existing use of digital mapping and remote sensing technologies; they have not purchased a GIS system ‘off the shelf.’     

Constructing Risk: multi-scale change,livelihoods and vulnerability in the Mekong Delta,Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Change has been at the heart of the livelihoods concept since its inception, allowing for a clear focus on how people perceive, respond to and experience risk. The ardent focus on ‘the local’ within livelihoods work, both in research and programmatic terms, has to some extent overshadowed attention on the role of wider-scale political economic and environmental processes in generating change and determining responses to change. Livelihoods in the Mekong Delta have never been ‘local’, having long been historically embedded in international, regional and national economic, political and environmental transformations. Drivers of change at these wider scales have intensified, complicating local responses to change, whether through economic, social or political means. A more nuanced appreciation of how scaled relations can be supported is required to better anticipate and respond to the political ecology of risk.     

Acquisition of industrial enterprises and its relations with regional identity: The case of the beer industry in Central Europe

ABSTRACT

The development of globalisation has ushered in fundamental changes that have led to a break in the relationship between places of production and places of consumption, and sometimes a rejection of global products and corporations at the local level in accordance with neolocalism. The objective of the article is to examine the effect of regional identity on the local impacts of global processes by applying a multilevel analysis of the brewing industry, in which consumers are very sensitive to changes in the beer offered and can influence it, for example by putting pressure on representatives of restaurants. Beginning with extensive research on the international level, the authors point out the various impacts of brewery acquisitions in three Central European countries – Czechia, Poland and Slovakia – that differ regarding the role of beer in the identity of their inhabitants. Thereafter, they focus on two Czech beer brands, the production of which was relocated to other regions after acquisitions. Based on field studies in the regions of the brands’ original production, the authors find that both brands lost popularity among their original customers. They conclude that for Czech customers, the place of production may be an important factor when choosing a beer brand.     

The look of agricultural landscapes – How do non-crop landscape elements contribute to visual preferences in a large-scale agricultural landscape?

ABSTRACT

Efficiency in agricultural food production has long been in focus and this has affected the spatial structure of agricultural land use. One outcome has been extensive criticism based on a wide range of negative consequences, such as for biodiversity, accessibility, cultural heritage, and aesthetics. In line with the European Landscape Convention (ELC), management of people’s everyday landscapes is important. In Norway, agricultural landscapes are the ‘everyday landscape’ for a large proportion of the population. The aim of the article is to contribute to the understanding of landscape changes perceived as positive or negative by the inhabitants. The authors focused on grain-crop dominated landscapes and the impact of smaller non-crop elements on people’s landscape preferences. They administered a photo-based questionnaire using manipulated photos to assess preferences for different agricultural landscapes. Additionally, people’s perceived objectives for the agricultural sector and agriculture’s primary functions were assessed. The results documented positive perceptions of added landscape elements and that people were both aware of and agreed on the multifunctional role of agriculture. The authors conclude that if the public’s preferences are to be taken into consideration, such as during policymaking, it is important to maintain various landscape elements in the large-scale grain field landscapes of Norway.     

Nordic innovation models: Why is Norway different?

ABSTRACT

The study objective is to assess why official statistics give the impression that Norway has low levels of innovation compared to other Nordic countries. The author examines innovation practices in Denmark and Norway to demonstrate that this is not the case. The results reveal that official statistics are misleading and that Norway has a high level of innovation but spends relatively less on scientific research. A further finding is that in Finland and Sweden innovation is heavily based on science and technology, whereas Denmark and Norway are clearly more pragmatic and base their innovation more on a ‘doing, using, and interacting’ (DUI) post-science, technology, and innovation (STI) approach. Additionally, in Denmark systems are led by small and medium-sized enterprises, whereas in Norway they are led by large enterprises. The author discusses the explanations for such differences in national and regional ‘innovation systems’ among countries that appear to outsiders to have a lot in common. He concludes that, by contrast, the ‘insiders’ are aware that they are quite distinctive societies that are evolving notably divergent developmental pathways. A key and probably controversial conclusion is that in the contemporary post-specialisation and post-cluster era the DUI systems have advantages over the STI-led ones.     

Understanding Ethnic Residential Cluster Formation: new perspectives from South Australia’s migrant hostels

ABSTRACT

Throughout Australia’s history, successive governments have lamented the clustering of non-English-speaking migrants in ‘ethnic enclaves’ or ‘ghettos’. From the early Chinatowns of the 1800s till today, urban concentrations of ethnic groups have raised concerns and fears in local populations and authorities alike, despite decades of international research which suggests that ethnic residential clusters actually aid long-term assimilation and adjustment. Many of the ethnic residential clusters in contemporary Australia have been claimed to be a direct consequence of the migrant hostels and reception centres which operated between 1948 and the 1990s. This paper traces migrant settlement patterns in South Australia in rich detail, revealing the complexities of lived experiences that shape migrant settlement decisions. Against the background of public and scholarly debates over ‘ethnic enclaves’, and drawing on quantitative and qualitative historical research on the lived experiences of former hostel migrants, it analyses how migrant hostels and reception centres contributed to the settlement experiences of diverse migrants. We conclude that migrant hostels were just one among various factors that led to the growth and maintenance of ethnic residential clusters.     

Studying the making of geographical knowledge: The implications of insider interviews

The article addresses the issue of being a ‘double’ insider when conducting interviews. Double insider means being an insider both in relation to one's research matter – in the authors’ case the making of geographical knowledge – and in relation to one's interviewees – our colleagues. The article is a reflection paper in the sense that we reflect upon experiences drawn from a previous research project carried out in Danish academia. It is important that the project was situated in a Scandinavian workplace culture because this has bearings for the social, cultural, and economic situation in which knowledge was constructed. The authors show that being a double insider affects both the interview situation and how interviews are planned, located, and analysed. Being an insider in relation to one's interviewees gives the advantage of having a shared history and a close knowledge of the context, and these benefits outnumber the disadvantages. Being an insider in relation to one's research matter makes it difficult to contest hegemonic discourses and tacit values and ideas. Recommendations on how to handle the double insider situation are given. The article concludes that for analytical purposes, it is useful to separate the two roles, but in reality they coexist and are intertwined.     

The many faces of local community: Exploring lay conceptualizations of the Norwegian lokalsamfunn

ABSTRACT

Despite much attention paid to the topic of community in academic literature and policy documents, there is a relative lack of knowledge about what laypersons perceive as a local community. Based on data from a national survey, the authors examine how c.1400 Norwegians conceptualized local community – lokalsamfunn in Norwegian. They reveal some of the linguistic and conceptual aspects of local community as a term, in addition to tendencies and patterns among the survey responses. The respondents’ conceptualizations contained references to lokalsamfunn variously as a geographical area, people and relations, activities and involvement, attachment to place and people, and provider of local goods and services. Their main emphasis was on lokalsamfunn as a spatial unit. However, the responses contained relatively few references to the relational aspects of lokalsamfunn. The authors conclude that a common, lay understanding may be that lokalsamfunn is a vaguely defined but limited geographical unit filled with people who to varying degrees know each other and interact. Concerning policymaking aimed at fostering communal well-being, the authors hold that any community-based programming requires intricate knowledge of the people who form the community, since without community interaction and a degree of social cohesion any envisioned programmes may not succeed.     

Configuring floating production networks: A case study of a new offshore wind technology across two oil and gas economies

ABSTRACT

The authors employ the global production network (GPN) approach to analyse the development of the renewable energy sector. Through a case study of the development of a Hywind floating offshore wind project (Hywind) across two oil and gas economies, namely Norway and Scotland, the paper sheds light on the key drivers and role of core GPN actors. Methodologically, the authors investigate the process from both ‘inside-out’ and ‘outside-in’ perspectives, referring to the efforts of firms expanding into overseas markets and the efforts of host countries to attract investment from outside their territories. The analysis shows how the configuration of extractive production networks is shaped by the interactions between the network development practices of firms and the market development strategies of host states. The authors conclude that the distinct materiality of floating wind power technology shapes the territorial configuration of the production network by enabling its spatial extension across a range of locations. By contrast, existing research on other extractive sectors has emphasized the spatially constraining effects of materiality (Bridge 2008).     

新疆大喀纳斯旅游区旅游产业集群竞争力评价

 运用区位熵法与旅游产业链及专业化分工相结合的方法,判别出新疆大喀纳斯旅游区旅游产业的集聚态势,根据本地区旅游发展过程中政府起到的作用,在现有的产业集群竞争力评价模型的基础上构建GEMS模型,对新疆大喀纳斯旅游区旅游产业集群竞争力进行定量评价,得出其现有竞争力水平处于全国中上水平,企业战略、结构与竞争是其发展的短板。     

Seeking commonalities of community resilience to natural hazards: A cluster analysis approach

ABSTRACT

The aim of the study on which the article is based was to identify groups of communities with similar resilience profiles, using Norwegian municipalities as a case. The authors used a set of socioeconomic and environmental indicators as measures of municipalities’ resilience and performed a cluster analysis to divide the municipalities into groups with similar multivariate resilience signatures. The results revealed six groups of municipalities that, apart from their unique combinations of indicator scores, featured certain spatial patterns, such as an “urban cluster” with urbanized municipalities and a “suburban cluster” with municipalities concentrated around major cities. The authors conclude that municipalities in each of the groups shared aspects that made them either more or less resilient to natural hazards, which could make them potential targets for shared interventions. Additionally, the authors conclude that clustering can be used to identify municipalities with similar resilience features and that could benefit from networking and sharing operational planning as a way to improve their respective communities' resilience to natural hazards.     

Imagining the Dirty Green City

ABSTRACT

The green city is being elevated to the status of a self-evident good in the theory and practice of urban sustainability. A large literature documents the linked environmental, economic and well-being benefits associated with vegetating urban systems to maximise the ecosystem function. Contemporary urban greening seeks to challenge attempts to expel nature from the city in a quest for order and control. However, by imagining nature as a new mode of urban purification, much effort in the name of the green city inverts and reproduces dualistic understandings of natural and built space. In response, we disrupt the normative dialectics of purity and dirt that sustain this dualism to expose the untidy but fertile ground of the green city. We draw together Ash Amin’s four registers of the Good City – relatedness, rights, repair and re-enchantment – with the artworks of the Australian visual ecologist Aviva Reed. Our work seeks to enrich the practice of more-than-human urbanism through ‘dirt thinking’ by imagining the transformative possibilities in, of and for the dirty green city.     

Internationalization of knowledge-intensive SMEs: The case of petroleum-related suppliers

Carlsson, E. & Dale, B. 2011. Internationalization of knowledge-intensive SMEs: The case of petroleum-related suppliers. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 65, 191–201. ISSN 0029-1951.

The internationalization of the knowledge-intensive industries, which predominantly consist of SMEs, has received increased attention recently. However, the existing body of theories of internationalization is not adequate for our understanding of multifaceted knowledge-intensive industries. The authors aim to shed light on knowledge-intensive SMEs’ internationalization and thereafter to illuminate recent theories with a relational perspective on firms and discuss their fruitfulness regarding the internationalization of SMEs of this type. Empirical data are drawn from a case study of 10 Norwegian firms, located in Trondheim, that are connected to the petroleum industry through subcontracting technology and services. The study indicates that the firms based their internationalization processes on a complex mix of modes or strategies, none of which were mutually exclusive. Planned strategies as well as coincidental processes and events seem to have influenced the internationalization decisions. It is argued that in order to understand the contingencies that may affect the process of internationalization, the concept of ‘preactivity’ may be a useful addition to the more well-known concepts of ‘reactive’ and ‘proactive’ strategies. Moreover, it is demonstrated that a relational approach is fruitful in order to understand internationalization processes among knowledge-intensive SMEs.     

Meteorological Observations in 1995 at the Arctic Station,Qeqertarsuaq (Godhavn), Central West Greenland/Concentrational Agriculture: Types,Functions, and Derivation/Den Danske Nationalkomité for Geografi

In October 1990 an automatic meteorological station was established at the Arctic Station (69°15'N, 53°31'W), Qeqertarsuaq (Godhavn), Central West Greenland, The station register parameters each 20 min, and the parameters have been described in an earlier paper in this journal by Nielsen et al. (1995). The present paper summarises main points of the climate during 1995.

Concentrational agriculture, defined as types of agriculture based on local concentration of plant nutrients, encompasses two main types: shifting cultivation and infield-outfield systems. They may ecologically be characterised by their mode of concentration: either by a vertical or a horisontal transfer (‘pumping’) of nutrients, respectively. The use of the general term ‘concentrational agriculture’ for the two forms is advocated by demonstrating that functional substitution of one by the other is possible, and by showing that the one type theoretically can be derived from the other. Historically, infield-outfield systems are supposed to be developed from some form of shifting cultivation.

Kort beretning om virksomheden i 1995

Justering af medlemskredsen. I forbindelse med valg af repræsentanter fandt en justering af repræsentationsområder sled (Århus Universilet har ikke længere fagområdet ‘kulturgeografi’). Videnskabernes Selskab har i samme forbindelse bifaldet, at fire observatører, repræsenterende undervisningstrinene i geografi deltager i møderne.     

Two-stage permutation tests for determining homogeneity within a spatial cluster

The discovery of spatial clusters formed by proximal spatial units with similar non-spatial attribute values plays an important role in spatial data analysis. Although several spatial contiguity-constrained clustering methods are currently available, almost all of them discover clusters in a geographical dataset, even though the dataset has no natural clustering structure. Statistically evaluating the significance of the degree of homogeneity within a single spatial cluster is difficult. To overcome this limitation, this study develops a permutation test approach Specifically, the homogeneity of a spatial cluster is measured based on the local variance and cluster member permutation, and two-stage permutation tests are developed to determine the significance of the degree of homogeneity within each spatial cluster. The proposed permutation tests can be integrated into the existing spatial clustering algorithms to detect homogeneous spatial clusters. The proposed tests are compared with four existing tests (i.e., Park’s test, the contiguity-constrained nonparametric analysis of variance (COCOPAN) method, spatial scan statistic, and q-statistic) using two simulated and two meteorological datasets. The comparison shows that the proposed two-stage permutation tests are more effective to identify homogeneous spatial clusters and to determine homogeneous clustering structures in practical applications.