Geography Of Firms Research Articles

Geography of firms and propagation of local economic conditions

AbstractThis study shows that the geographic network of public firms facilitates the propagation of local economic conditions across the United States. We identify economic connections among U.S. states based on the 10‐K listings of public firms and show that the returns and liquidity of firms headquartered in connected states exhibit excess comovement. The economic connections also generate spillover effects where the economy of a state affects its connected states and amplifies the impact of local economic conditions on the U.S. economy. In particular, a 1% production increase in a large state like California is associated with a 6.71% change in annual U.S. GDP growth, relative to average GDP growth.

Land use regulations and the dispersion of the IT Industry in the San Francisco Bay area

AbstractUrban economists have recently found evidence that land use regulations prevent the efficient migration of workers among regions, generating losses in output. By contrast, there is a lack of work that directly considers the relationship between land use regulations and the geography of firms and industries. Since the 1980s, the IT industry has dispersed from its historical core, Silicon Valley, around the broader San Francisco Bay Area. This study finds that restrictive land use practices have limited IT firm creation in Silicon Valley, pushing the industry to less productive parts of the regional economy.

Impact of CRM technology on sales process behaviors: empirical results from US, Europe, and Asia

ABSTRACTPurpose: The diffusion of customer relationship management (CRM) systems across the globe, over the last decade, has created a need to improve the understanding of the impact of technology on the sales process from a global perspective. The authors examine how CRM technology impacts the sales process (creating opportunity, managing opportunity, and managing relationships) in three regions of the world (US, Europe, and Asia).Methodology/Approach: The differences among US respondents (n = 789), European respondents (n = 327), and Asian respondents (n = 91) were explored. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted on creating opportunity, managing opportunity, and managing relationships, with dichotomized CRM effectiveness and geography (US/Europe/Asia) as factors.Findings: The MANOVA revealed a significant influence of CRM effectiveness, but a non-significance for geography and a non-significance for the interaction between CRM effectiveness and geography. This pattern of results suggests that CRM effectiveness leads to significant differences in sales processes; however, these influences are not qualified by the geography to which the firm belongs. Ensuing univariate Analysis of Varirances (ANOVAs) revealed a significant influence of CRM effectiveness on creating opportunity, managing opportunity, and managing relationships, but not for firm–geography or its interaction with CRM effectiveness. Post hoc tests revealed that firms high on CRM effectiveness were better at creating opportunity, managing opportunity, and managing relationships. Differences in CRM effectiveness lead to significant differences in sales processes; however, these influences once again are not qualified by the geography to which the firms belong.Originality/Value Contribution: This study provides several contributions to the stream of research focused on CRM globally. First, due to globalization, CRM use and process can be more standardized across regions and cultures. With the evolution of technology such as Web 2.0 and cloud computing, barriers to communicating and exchanging information, regardless of time zone or location, have been decreased. A US firm’s use of a CRM platform can essentially capture the same information on a client that a firm in Europe or Asia also manages. CRM’s ultimate measure of success is for the buyer–seller relationship process to positively impact the level of business conducted.

Examining the transition processes in the Pearl River Delta polycentric mega-city region through the lens of corporate networks

This paper presents an analysis of the shifting spatial organization of the Pearl River Delta (PRD), a large-scale urbanized region bordering Hong Kong that includes major cities, such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, alongside a range of other fast-developing cities and towns. Our methodology measures and compares the different networking components of the PRD's spatial organization and uses data on the geography of firms' networks as observed in the links between locations of headquarters and subsidiaries in 2001, 2008 and 2013. We examine whether there has been a shift towards integrated polycentricity in the unfolding spatial organization of this ‘workshop of the world’ through functional polycentricity and a typology of the geographies of these links. The results suggest complex interaction processes in the PRD in which network interactions significantly increased in 2001–08 and slightly declined in 2008–13 (with the exception of manufacturing links, which are increasingly managed from headquarters in Guannei, Shenzhen). We argue that the PRD is increasingly characterized by a functional polycentric and cross-regional interaction pattern for market-oriented sectors; although more regionalized, networks continue to dominate sectors that have higher proportions of state-owned enterprises.

Information Environment and the Geography of Firms and Investors

We develop a model linking stock ownership and returns to the distribution of private information and quality of public information. Supporting the model, we find that the firm’s information environment affects investors’ propensity to hold and trade its stocks, but its effects hinge on investors’ access to private information. Nearby investors with potential access decrease their holdings when private information becomes more dispersed and public information quality improves, whereas distant investors display opposite patterns. Tests exploiting exogenous shocks to firms’ information environments indicate these relations are causal. Moreover, firms’ information environments and proximity to potential investors jointly explain stock returns.

Geography of Firms and Propagation of Local Economic Shocks

Geography of Firms and Propagation of Local Economic Shocks

Home Away from Home: Geography of Firms and Local Ownership

Home Away from Home: Geography of Firms and Local Ownership

The Structural Contexts of Low-Wage Work: Restaurant Employment Practices Across Firm Geography, Size, and Ownership Status

This qualitative organizational case study examined how restaurant employers respond to a minimum wage mandate through human resource practices they apply to waitstaff. The author considered three contextual factors as potential correlates of such practices: restaurants' geographic location, size, and ownership. Data come from interviews with owners and managers of 15 restaurants in Washington State, home of the nation's highest minimum wage. Findings suggest that employers' discretion over working conditions shapes waiters' work schedule, and in turn take-home pay and benefits eligibility, effects partly patterned by the contextual factors. The author discusses public strategies for improving job quality given these findings.

ICT Intensity of Use and the Geography of Firms

This paper investigates the relationship between the geography of firms and the intensity of use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Our approach to the geography of firms is multifaceted, in relation to the various characteristics of their location area(s), to their organisational fragmentation, and to their spatial organisation at a national scale. Making use of a single cross-section dataset drawn from the ‘ICT and e-commerce’ survey for the French industry, we examine firms' decisions to use the Internet more or less intensively. We find that firms' internal fragmentation lead to important variations in the intensity of Internet use. Moreover, we find that firms benefit from urbanisation economies through the location of their headquarters and also through that of their units in the case of multiunit firms. Finally, we observe a strong positive effect of competitive pressure at both national and international levels as well as geographical and sectoral epidemic effects on the intrafirm diffusion of the Internet.

The territoriality of the network economy and urban networks: evidence from flanders

As the network economy is continuing to develop, external economies are taking over internal economies and they are increasingly determining the entrepreneurial logic. To evaluate the territorial impact of this new logic a theoretical framework is developed based on a division of external economies between agglomeration economies that play a role in the economic functioning of urban areas and network economies that result from the networking among firms. The general picture of firms located in Flanders is one of intense networking within agglomerations, especially in their networking with suppliers, together with intense short and long distance relationships, where urban areas dominate the scene. A comparison between the urban networks introduced in spatial policy and the geography of firms’ networks, which has been investigated in this paper as the outcome of a large scale questionnaire, reveals that the nature of the firms’ networked territory can in fact not be translated in terms of urban networks but in terms of relationships between firms located in territories with dynamic industrial communities, and where cities, as a contextual place, play an important role.