Organizational Geography Research Articles

Cloud Computing and Firm Growth

Abstract Cloud computing has shifted how firms access IT away from investment in fixed capital to pay-on-demand services that facilitate remote and simultaneous use. Using firm-level data we examine the impact of cloud adoption on firm performance and organizational geography with an IV approach that exploits cross-section and time-series variation in fiber broadband speeds as instruments. Cloud leads younger firms to increase revenue, employment, and productivity, whereas incumbent firms experience no scale effects and weaker productivity gains. Incumbents however undergo restructuring through establishment deaths and fewer births, while both types of firms experience geographic reorganization shifting farther from the headquarters.

Informality and lead firm dominance in the sub-contracting chain: The case of Tanzanian trucking firms

This article makes the case for broadening the analysis on power relations in value chains by focusing on the structure and nature of domestic sub-contracting in Tanzania’s road transport trucking sector. Using the framework of Organisational Geographies of Power I identify the rise of Tanzania’s lead trucking companies and the sources of their on-going dominance in the sub-contracting chain. Building on critical literature which has theorised subcontracting relations as ‘rentier’ in developed countries, I highlight the role of informality as a source of economic rents in developing countries. Tanzania’s trucking industry is a site of intertwining formal and informal capital accumulation. Sub-contracting relations accentuate the political and economic power of lead firms in instrumentalising informality and strengthen their dominance in the road transport sector.

Organisational Geographies and Corporate Responsibility: A Case Study of Japanese Multinational Corporations Operating in South Africa and Tanzania

Organisational Geographies and Corporate Responsibility: A Case Study of Japanese Multinational Corporations Operating in South Africa and Tanzania

Organisational Geographies of Finance: Opening the Black Box of Global Investment Banks

AbstractFor some time, economic geographers have been interested in the geographies of transnational corporations. However, these debates have not yet included a discussion of the geographies of global investment banks. This paper seeks to open the black box of global investment banks. It shows that although our understanding of the geographies of financial markets was advanced over the recent years, a discussion of the internal relations of banks remain on the agenda. To understand the investment strategy and practice of banks, it is necessary to understand the different forms of knowledge practices alongside its social and spatial division of labour. I argue that the creation of knowledge within banks is shaped not only by the local context but also through the occupational specialisms. I will conclude that a non‐uniform view of financial market institutions is essential: it allows a clearer picture of the actors who are involved in the internal decision‐making processes of global investment banks. In turn this provides an idea of the responsibilities and influence of specific actors with respect to banks' investment practices.

Access to HIV Care and Support Services for African American Transwomen Living with HIV

ABSTRACT Low access to HIV care and support has led to survival rates for transwomen that are half that of other populations at risk for HIV. Within the population, HIV disproportionately impacts African American transwomen. Interventions to increase access to HIV care and support are needed to better serve those most affected and vulnerable within the population. We conducted a study of barriers to care and support services for African American transwomen to fill a gap in the literature to improve access for this population. A total of 10 in-depth interviews were conducted with African American transwomen with HIV who lived outside the metro area of San Francisco. Three overarching thematic topics emerged—gender stigma, peer, and institutional distrust—giving insight into African American transwomen's barriers to HIV care and support services. A number of factors within these themes impacted access, such as whether organizations offered gender-related care, the geography of organizations as it relates to safe transportation and location, confidentiality and trust of peers and organizations, and trauma. Specific instrumental, institutional, and emotional supports are recommended for increasing access to care and support services for African American transwomen living with HIV.

ORGANIZATIONAL GEOGRAPHY AND INSTITUTIONAL DUALITY IN THE DIFFUSION OF CSR PRACTICES

This study combines the concepts of institutional duality and organizational geography to add additional insights into the diffusion analysis of certifiable Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices. We rely on institutional duality to explain the existence of diversity in organizational practices, rather than homogeneity as institutional isomorphism would predict. We propose geographically related organizational hypotheses to explain this duality. To study the question of institutional duality and persistence of two management practices, we use the case of certifiable CSR practices in Mexico, where two certifiable environmental programs have become institutionalized over the last 10 years.

Organizational geography, experiential learning and subsidiary exit: Japanese foreign expansions in China, 1979-2001

We examine how experiential learning and vicarious learning, as tied to a subsidiary’s organizational geography, influence the exit rates of Japanese subsidiaries located in China. We find that exit rates were lower for subsidiaries that were established geographically proximate to the prior expansions of industry peers from Japan. Exit rates were also lower for subsidiaries established by firms with experience in similar product markets in China. Exit rates were greater, however, when a parent firm had substantial experience outside the product market of the current expansion. Importantly, the influence of a subsidiary’s geographic proximity to its peers on its exit rate is contingent on whether its parent firm had prior experience inside or outside the product market of the new expansion.

Organisational geographies of power: Introduction to special issue

This paper introduces the special issue ‘organisational geographies of power’ by examining the theoretical and empirical context for debates. It does this, firstly, with reference to existing theoretical work on what power is and does as well as work on the construction of power relations. Building on this, the paper then, secondly, examines the way relational and production network approaches have incorporated power into work on transnational corporations before, thirdly, considering how work on neoliberalism has studied the construction of spatial power relations. In doing this the paper highlights four important questions for future research relating to the practices and spatiality of power, the exercising of power and the situated effects of power relations.

EMOTIONS THAT BUILD NETWORKS: GEOGRAPHIES OF HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENTS IN ARGENTINA AND BEYOND

ABSTRACTSocial movement activists perform emotional labour that helps create and mobilise networks of collective action. The emotions of activism often contribute to social movements’ different organisational geographies. Two grassroots networks of human rights activists that originated in Argentina (the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and HIJOS) developed different emotional geographies over time. Both human rights movements were formed by relatives of victims of past human rights abuses and operated throughout Latin America and beyond. The movements incorporated activists and supporters who were linked by shared emotional bonds and by a common interpretation of the emotions of their activism. Activists in the two networks strategically deployed and framed the emotions of their activism in order to sustain it and to enhance possibilities for building broader networks of collective action. The comparison of these two human rights activist groups demonstrates that social movements’ organisational and geographic trajectories are often related to activists’ shared emotional connections and to the emotional labour that they perform through their networks.

Organisational geographies of corporate responsibility: a UK-US comparison of retailers' ethical trading initiatives

Ethical trade, involving corporate codes of conduct for sites of production, has become a key means through which labour in retailers’ global supply chains is regulated. Yet, there is evidence to suggest that retail corporations vary markedly in their approaches to ethical trade and that such variation is shaped, in part, by the national-institutional contexts in which retailers are based. This article explores this insight by evaluating the distinct roles played by multi-stakeholder initiatives for ethical trade in the UK and USA. While the UK's core multi-stakeholder initiative, the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), encompasses retailers from a variety of sectors and takes a developmental and continuous learning approach to ethical trade, the US multi-stakeholder initiatives are focussed more on corporate accountability based on compliance monitoring exclusively in the clothing sector. Given recent organisational attempts to foster transnational dialogue between multi-stakeholder initiatives, though, we argue that the precise ways in which national-institutional contexts shape retailers’ ethical trading approaches are fluid and mutable. We contribute to the literature on the governance of global supply chains, retailer power and corporate responsibility by emphasising the political significance of national-institutional environments. However, in line with notions of relational economic geography, we understand these national-institutional environments as active and dynamic contexts, and accentuate the coalitional ways in which nationally based organisations evolve in their home countries and go on to shape broader transnational agendas for ethical trade.

Genuine Renewal or Pyrrhic Victory? The Scale Politics of Trade Union Recognition in the UK

There is an ongoing debate within radical geography concerned with the trade union response to the hegemony of business interests apparent under neoliberal capitalism. In this paper, I contribute to this debate by exploring recent attempts to renew trade union organisation in the UK following decades of decline. I argue that, despite recent successes in stemming falling membership numbers and signing new recognition agreements, closer inspection reveals flaws in the renewal process that reflect the underlying nature of scale politics within the union movement itself. In particular, centralised strategies at the national level are failing to re‐energise local‐level union organisation leading to a rather hollow and pyrrhic renewal process. Drawing upon both macro‐level analysis and evidence from a particular industry case study, I suggest that unions rethink their organisational geographies and scalar relations if they wish to re‐connect with the grassroots and at a broader level remain a progressive force in the changing economic landscape.

Methodological frameworks for the geography of organizations

In this paper, we present three methodological frameworks for the geographic study of organizations. These are situated within three meta-theoretical perspectives in human geography: spatial science, critical realism, and post-structuralism. Each framework offers a different theorization of organizations, and each prompts different research questions that can be used to guide their geographic study. The research questions we offer are general, and are pertinent to all types of organizations. To supplement the methodological contributions of this paper, we suggest how each of these frameworks might inform empirical investigations of Appalshop, a media arts organization located in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

“Diffusing the light of liberty”: The geography of political lecturing in the Chartist movement

Lecturing activity was central to the ambitions of the Chartist movement for universal suffrage in early Victorian Britain, not merely because it was an effective means of political proselytism, but also because it was emblematic of Chartist political aims. Political lecturing followed a long radical tradition, but Chartism was able to systematize and to professionalize it on an unprecedented scale, binding together local and regional initiatives within a genuinely national politics. The article describes this organizational geography. An awareness of the symbolic and organizational commitment within Chartism to a national system of communication also prompts a reassessment of the significance of political media, however. It is argued here that the formal geography of political lecturing should be taken to be consistent and complementary, rather than merely instrumental, to Chartism's broader political culture.

CENTRIFUGAL–CENTRIPETAL FORCES IN INTERNATIONAL PETROLEUM COMPANY REGIONS1

(1961). CENTRIFUGAL–CENTRIPETAL FORCES IN INTERNATIONAL PETROLEUM COMPANY REGIONS. Annals of the Association of American Geographers: Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 124-138.