Jonathan V. Beaverstock

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TRAVEL: SOME EXPLORATIONS

Abstract. International business travel is now an omnipresent feature of working life for many millions of people around the globe. Whatever the organizational reason, it is now the likelihood that many individuals are engaged in undertaking work outside of the formal workplace in an irregular pattern which has become an almost ordinary aspect of their working‐life. Such is the magnitude of international business travel that it is now highly significant for bringing multi‐million dollar expenditure to countries and the global airline and hotel sectors, and supporting an international business travel management industry. Yet, surprisingly, little has been written on the agency of international business travel, beyond vignettes of the organizational requirement for physical proximity. In this introduction (and special issue) we consider what further academic analyses of business travel must do to extend knowledge and understanding of the growth and use of travel in the twenty‐first century. The article is in five parts. First, we consider the function of international business travel in firms as part of strategies to tie‐together spatially distributed subsidiaries. Second, we unpack the modes and spaces of business travel. Third, we discuss the impacts of business travel on both the traveller, but also the environment. Fourth, we introduce the major arguments and contributions of the four articles in this special issue. Finally, we identify future research agendas that should develop existing theory and understanding of the compulsion for international business travel.

German Cities in the World City Network

This paper provides a brief critical appraisal of the relationality of German cities in the world city network. The paper is divided into four parts. After the introduction, part two highlights the major findings of each individual contribution to this special issue, and teases out the major patterns of German world city connectivity at both the international and domestic scale. This is followed in part three by a critical evaluation of the sum of all the individual paper findings, which comments on their aggregated contribution to three significant themes in world city studies: methods and empirics, theory and policy. The final part of the paper considers an alternative research agenda, calling for more qualitative research and engagement with in-depth, process-based studies of German world city networks, which will analyse both attributive and relational data.ZusammenfassungDieser Beitrag liefert eine kurze, kritische Betrachtung der Vernetzung deutscher Städte in das globale städtische Netzwerk. Er ist in vier Kapitel unterteilt. Nach der Einleitung fasst das zweite Kapitel die Ergebnisse der in diesem Schwerpunktheft enthaltenen Beiträge zusammen und eruiert die grundlegende Struktur der Vernetzung deutscher Städte auf der internationalen und nationalen Ebene. Daran anknüpfend liefert Kapitel drei eine kritische Bewertung der vorangegangenen Beiträge in Bezug auf drei wichtige Themen der Golbal-City-Forschung: Methoden und Empirie, Theorie und politische Umsetzung. Der letzte Teil des Beitrags enthält eine alternative Forschungsagenda mit der Forderung nach mehr qualitativer, umfassender und prozessualer Erforschung der Vernetzung deutscher Städte in das globale städtische Netzwerk, die sowohl attributive als auch relationale Daten berücksichtigt.

Cultural and Economic Complementarities of Spatial Agglomeration in the British Television Broadcasting Industry: Some Explorations

This paper considers the processes supporting agglomeration in the British television broadcasting industry. It compares and contrasts the insights offered by the cultural turn in geography and more conventionally economic approaches. It finds that culture and institutions are fundamental to the constitution of production and exchange relationships and also that they solve fundamental economic problems of coordinating resources under conditions of uncertainty and limited information. Processes at a range of spatial scales are important, from highly local to global, and conventional economics casts some light on which firms are most active and successful.

The Global Stock Market. Issuers, Investors, and Intermediaries in an Uneven World

In sum, this is an exemplary text, skilfully explaining the spatial organization and functioning of stock markets in an age of uncertainty, volatility and, to be frank, massive debt. At the top of the book, Dariusz Wójcik sets four goals: to document recent empirical trends in the performance of global stock markets; to theorize stock exchanges as networks and (relational) agglomeration economies; to examine the notion of unevenness between stock changes, teasing out core–periphery relations between them; and, finally, to present stock markets as still being significant drivers of economic growth for nation-states. I can confidently report that all four goals have been addressed in this book with empirical detail and theoretical insight, in a context which will be appealing across the social sciences and policy-relevant discourses. The book is divided into eight chapters and these neatly reflect and address the principal concepts of the book as discussed above. Chapter 1, ‘Introducing the Map of the Global Stock Market’, does exactly what is says on the tin! The reader is provided with a brief, yet highly informative account of the history, geography and function of global stock markets. The chapter provides an essential context for the rest of the text. Moving beyond the generalities of global stock markets, Chapters 2 and 3 add evidence-based detail by focusing on the role of proximity (and biases) of issuers entering the market. Chapter 2, ‘Biased Listings: Proximity in Domestic Primary Markets’, combines both theory and empirics to develop the argument of ‘financial centre bias’ (p. 21) which sets out explanations as to why provincial firms are less likely to go public (issuing initial public offerings – IPOs) than those from financial centres. Wójcik sets out a number of powerful and convincing arguments as to why this is the case, supported by empirical evidence from the ORBIS database. But, quite simply, provincial firms do not benefit from the agglomeration economies and global-knowledge networks that firms in financial centres can draw upon to issue IPOs efficiently and cost-effectively. Chapter 3 continues this line of argument about issuers, but in a more captivating fashion by focusing on the issuers from emerging markets: ‘The Footprint of Foreign Listings: Issuers fromEmerging Markets’. The unit of analysis is foreign listings from the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies and the chapter is enriched with evidence-based findings that examine the geographical distribution and pattern of foreign listings from major Brazilian, Russian, Indian and Chinese companies listing on the United States, United Kingdom and Luxembourg stock markets. In short, Brazil lists in New York, Russia in London, India in London and Luxembourg, and China in London and New York. But, interestingly, Wójcik sends an important message to the establishment:

Global urban analysis: a survey of cities in globalization, edited by Peter J. Taylor

Since the early 1980s, the concept of the ‘world city’ has become a central object of analyses in the fields of geography, sociology and urban studies to chart and explain the functionality, concentration and unevenness of economic globalization in contemporary society. Leading proponents of the world city/global city discourse have been writers like John Friedmann (1986), Peter Hall (1966), Anthony D. King (1991) and Saskia Sassen (1991), and more recently scholars associated with the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network (www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc). The mission of GaWC’s inner sanctum, Peter Taylor and myself, in close cooperation with Ben Derudder, Marcus Doel, Phil Hubbard, Michael Hoyler, Richard J. Smith and Frank Witlox to name a few (e.g. Beaverstock et al. 2000, 2002, Taylor et al. 2007, 2009), has been to bring a relational turn to traditional asset-based approaches of studying world/global cities in contemporary society. Spurred on by Castells’ (1996) notion of the Network Society, GaWC has set the relational agenda for studying world cities in an intercity framework. This approach utilizes both empirical, quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches to theorize, measure and assess the magnitude of connections and relations between world cities. The quantitative approach has derived the interlocking world city network, where global flows and connections are measured as being uneven, which results in the identification of differentiated network connectivities between cities and ultimately ranks cities in networks of connectivity. GaWC has produced hundreds of research bulletins, book chapters and refereed journal articles across the social science disciplines that champion the interlocking network model for studying and ranking the world city network (see www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc). It is not until now, however, in this book, that the ‘GaWC team’ have produced the opus magnum of global-scale analyses of the world city network, as defined by their parameters of study. Global Urban Analysis does exactly what it says on the cover of the book. The collection of essays provides a snapshot of the globality of the world city network in globalization, drawing upon two influential research groups, GaWC and scholars from the Global Urban Competitiveness Project (GUCP) at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing. This book is the lexicon or compendium for analysing the patterns and connectivities of world cities which will hearten all those empirical scholars of urban studies and, importantly, policymakers who require a quick fix to place ‘their city’ in different rankings of connectivity in the interlocking world city network. Let us be very clear at the outset, this is a very remarkable project that has been undertaken by GaWC and GUCP, and it should receive many commendations and plaudits from both the academy and policy-arena. Of course, GaWC’s overarching meta-narrative and empirical approach has not been without its critics (e.g. Robinson 2002), but, Taylor et al. are perfectly justified

German Cities in the World City Network@@@Deutsche Städte im World City Network: Some Observations@@@Einige Beobachtungen

This paper provides a brief critical appraisal of the relationality of German cities in the world city network. The paper is divided into four parts. After the introduction, part two highlights the major findings of each individual contribution to this special issue, and teases out the major patterns of German world city connectivity at both the international and domestic scale. This is followed in part three by a critical evaluation of the sum of all the individual paper findings, which comments on their aggregated contribution to three significant themes in world city studies: methods and empirics, theory and policy. The final part of the paper considers an alternative research agenda, calling for more qualitative research and engagement with in-depth, process-based studies of German world city networks, which will analyse both attributive and relational data.ZusammenfassungDieser Beitrag liefert eine kurze, kritische Betrachtung der Vernetzung deutscher Städte in das globale städtische Netzwerk. Er ist in vier Kapitel unterteilt. Nach der Einleitung fasst das zweite Kapitel die Ergebnisse der in diesem Schwerpunktheft enthaltenen Beiträge zusammen und eruiert die grundlegende Struktur der Vernetzung deutscher Städte auf der internationalen und nationalen Ebene. Daran anknüpfend liefert Kapitel drei eine kritische Bewertung der vorangegangenen Beiträge in Bezug auf drei wichtige Themen der Golbal-City-Forschung: Methoden und Empirie, Theorie und politische Umsetzung. Der letzte Teil des Beitrags enthält eine alternative Forschungsagenda mit der Forderung nach mehr qualitativer, umfassender und prozessualer Erforschung der Vernetzung deutscher Städte in das globale städtische Netzwerk, die sowohl attributive als auch relationale Daten berücksichtigt.

German Cities in the World City NetworkDeutsche Städte im World City Network

This paper provides a brief critical appraisal of the relationality of German cities in the world city network. The paper is divided into four parts. After the introduction, part two highlights the major findings of each individual contribution to this special issue, and teases out the major patterns of German world city connectivity at both the international and domestic scale. This is followed in part three by a critical evaluation of the sum of all the individual paper findings, which comments on their aggregated contribution to three significant themes in world city studies: methods and empirics, theory and policy. The final part of the paper considers an alternative research agenda, calling for more qualitative research and engagement with in-depth, process-based studies of German world city networks, which will analyse both attributive and relational data.ZusammenfassungDieser Beitrag liefert eine kurze, kritische Betrachtung der Vernetzung deutscher Städte in das globale städtische Netzwerk. Er ist in vier Kapitel unterteilt. Nach der Einleitung fasst das zweite Kapitel die Ergebnisse der in diesem Schwerpunktheft enthaltenen Beiträge zusammen und eruiert die grundlegende Struktur der Vernetzung deutscher Städte auf der internationalen und nationalen Ebene. Daran anknüpfend liefert Kapitel drei eine kritische Bewertung der vorangegangenen Beiträge in Bezug auf drei wichtige Themen der Golbal-City-Forschung: Methoden und Empirie, Theorie und politische Umsetzung. Der letzte Teil des Beitrags enthält eine alternative Forschungsagenda mit der Forderung nach mehr qualitativer, umfassender und prozessualer Erforschung der Vernetzung deutscher Städte in das globale städtische Netzwerk, die sowohl attributive als auch relationale Daten berücksichtigt.