Clive Lawson

Internationalisation Processes, Networking and Local Embeddedness in Technology-Intensive Small Firms

The paper argues that technology-intensive small firms often need to internationalise their activities, and especially sales, at a very early stage of their development because of the limited and global nature of the technological market niche which they have been set up to exploit. From a survey of 100 such firms in the Cambridge and Oxford regions, it demonstrates that many technology-based smaller firms are engaged in a range of international networks and internationalisation processes, including internationalisation of markets, research collaboration, labour recruitment, ownership and facilities location. Technology-intensive firms reporting high levels of internationalisation also differ significantly from those which are more nationally-oriented, for example in terms of size, age, research intensity, university links, and innovativeness. There are also differences with respect to recent growth rates. Finally, the paper demonstrates that far from substituting international for local networks, technology-intensive firms which have achieved high levels of internationalisation in fact also exhibit above-average levels of local networking with respect to research collaboration and intra-industry links. Internationalisation therefore appears to be grounded or embedded in successful local networking and research and technology collaboration.

University-business interaction in the Oxford and Cambridge regions

This paper explores the interplay of factors that produce specific local patterns of interaction between firms and universities, using survey evidence from a comparative study of two e´lite locations, the Oxford and Cambridge regions. It uses these examples to examine why innovating firms have external links, why they have them with universities, which spatial mechanisms are significant in the place-specific technology transfer links universities have with firms in their immediate hinterlands, and what kinds of institutional factors influence the form links take. Copyright Royal Dutch Geographical Society 2001.

Realism Theory and Individualism in the Work of Carl Menger

Theorizing in economics is often associated with some form of individualism. This paper considers the nature of this association in the work of Carl Menger. I adopt this focus not only because of continuing interest in Mengers work, but because recent developments in social theory facilitate a fruitful reevaluation of his general position. I argue that a convincing link between theory and individualism is absent in Mengers work. Moreover, I argue that the various criticisms often made of his work actually relate to the ideas which underlie his individualism rather than, as is usually supposed, those arising from an adherence to a form of Aristotelianism.

Contrasting Regional Innovation Systems in Oxford and Cambridge

This opening epigraph by Cooke and Morgan encapsulates recent thinking on regional innovation systems. While national regulatory frameworks in their broadest sense provide the overall operating context, the regional or local environment is where firms live and learn. This is also the geographical scale at which the nexus of actions by individuals, business intermediaries, universities, and society can make a difference to the evolution of economic development. Thus the world is composed of a’ hierarchical mosaic of densely-developed regional economies with specific resource endowments, assets, institutions, co-ordination mechanism, know-how, rules of conduct and cognitive frameworks’ (Asheim and Dunford 1997,451). The specific characteristics of regions arise from the interaction of geo-historical events, and increasingly by ‘the elaboration of new forms of globalization in the organisation of industrial activity’ (Amin 1993, 447).

Technical consultancies and regional competences

This volume investigates the relationship between globalization, inequality and social capital, and reveals that although strongly related, these ideas are also highly contested. The authors elucidate the interactions between these concepts, looking in detail at the conflicts and competitiveness which can arise at both the national and organizational level.

Feenberg, Rationality and Isolation

Andrew Feenberg’s work continues critical theory’s concern with the way in which capitalism appears, or is experienced, as beyond criticism or challenge. Why or how the social practices involved appear this way is explained in terms of their apparent rationality. While Feenberg does more than most critical theorists to elaborate the conception of rationality involved, the account he gives, in terms of particular resemblances to science, seems at best ad hoc and at worst seems to cede science to positivism. I argue, however, that Feenberg’s account of rationality can easily be given an alternative, more ontological, grounding. Some implications of this alternative account are then drawn out, especially in relation to Feenberg’s theory of technology.