Entering the ‘Darwinian Markets of Europe’: Strategic Management of Space–Time in Two Regional Strategy Processes in Southern Finland, 1990–94

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of the strategic orientation towards regional transformation through the notion of ‘strategic management of space–time’. It argues that regional strategy processes are about a construction of selective semiotic economic imaginaries, controllable ‘slices’ out of the messiness of the ‘actually existing economy’. The paper presents a three-dimensional framework to analyse regional strategy processes focusing on strategic gaze, strategy sites and the spaces of strategy. In the framework, strategy process is perceived as partially ‘hermetic’ space that produces its own worldview, its distinctive perspective, out of the hybrid contextual materials. The perspective is the central ‘product’ of the regional strategy process; it strongly frames the landscape of potentialities (what is possible, what is plausible, what is desirable) created in the process. The paper exemplifies this framework by studying two strategy processes realised in Southern Finland in 1990–94. In both of these, the strategic gaze was built on an optic of Europe as a new kind of ‘Darwinian market space’ in which the economic survival and success would require specific regional capacities.

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank the Academy of Finland (grant SA132628) for the financial support of this work.

Notes

In Finnish regional administration, travel-to-work areas are a kind of functional region consisting of a centre and a periphery. Although the ‘exact’ definition of a travel-to-work area has been shifting in the past 20 years, it is usually thought of as a zone-like centre–periphery structure defined by the longest distance at which the centre attracts the commuting employees.