Geographies of Production: The Institutional Foundations of a Design‐Intensive Manufacturing Strategy

Abstract

AbstractThis article critically reviews research on the national institutional influence on firm practice in economic geography, in particular the “varieties of capitalism” school (VoC) and national business systems, in order to promote a deeper examination of the role of corporate agency in contemporary institutionalist approaches. In order to do so, it invokes a growing segment of the contemporary economy – design‐intensive manufacturing – and draws on the knowledge base framework developed by Asheim and Gertler () to identify a core set of industrial practices that enable design‐intensive manufacturing firms to integrate diverse knowledge bases (synthetic and symbolic) in order to compete effectively in global markets. In integrating these knowledge bases, firms are pressured to both align with, yet also deviate from, the dominant national institutional environment in which they operate. In the case of the latter, they may be prompted to develop local and sectoral forms of economic governance that compensate for an apparent disjunction at the national scale in order to adapt to certain aspects of the sectorally specific terms of competition. The case of design‐intensive manufacturing emphasizes the importance of hybrid institutions and practices in the global knowledge economy and demonstrates that an agency‐centered perspective is critical to our understanding of a more nuanced theory of firm practice.