Cooperative research in international studies: Insights from economic geography

An initial version of this paper was presented as the inaugural talk for the official launch of the Korea International Studies Association, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea, 8–9 October 2009. The author thanks the organizers and participants of the conference for their support and input.

Abstract

This article visits two highly integrative concepts deployed in contemporary economic geography – firm network analysis and embeddedness, and introduces the geographical approach to the study of globalization processes in an effort to generate cooperative synergies between the fields of international studies and geography. Geographical theorization with respect to interdisciplinary cooperation has begun to come full circle, from a borrower to a donor, as evidenced by its appearance in work in the fields of business, economics, sociology, and political science. This has further compelled geographers to emphasize analyses focusing on processes of change rather than a perpetuation of static models. However, there is still room for cooperative efforts that more robustly integrate insights pertaining to economic behavior, culture, and politics into spatially-sensitive theorization and research practice. This article draws extensively on the broadening role of East Asia, coupled with an accelerating cross-disciplinary emphasis on globalization, to demonstrate the value of analyses that simultaneously capture the activity of multiple actors operating at multiple scales in and across space.

Notes

An initial version of this paper was presented as the inaugural talk for the official launch of the Korea International Studies Association, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea, 8–9 October 2009. The author thanks the organizers and participants of the conference for their support and input.

1 This perspective is a branch of the resource-based theory of the firm, which views the firm as the central receptacle and manager of different resources and capabilities. Olalla (1999) provides a thorough discussion of this theory. Based on her analysis, inter and extra-firm relationships, such as with suppliers, distributors or larger organizational networks, can be categorized as intangible resources. In turn, these intangible resources can be used to generate capabilities and firm resources. The creation and management of capabilities at the firm level, for example inter-firm relationships with others in a value supply chain, is paramount to the overall long-term viability of a firm in the resource base view.

2 For some representative examples, please see Global Shift (Dicken, 1998 and subsequent editions), Spaces of Globalization: Reasserting the power of the local (Kox, ed. 1997), Globalizations Contradictions: Geographies of discipline, destruction, and transformation (Conway and Heynen, eds. 2006), and Remaking the Global Economy (Peck and Yeung, eds. 2003). For a study on the definition of globalization, see Al-Rodhan (2006).