FDI and regional development policy

The transformations in the worldwide division of labour brought about by globalisation and technological change have shown an unintended negative effect, particularly evident in advanced economic systems: uneven spatial distribution of wealth and rising within-country inequality. Although the latter has featured prominently in recent academic and policy debates, in this paper we argue that the relevance of connectivity (here proxied by foreign capital investments, FDI) for regional economic development is still underestimated and suffers from a nation-biased perspective. As a consequence, the relationship between the spatial inequality spurred by the global division of labour and the changes in the structural advantages of regions remains to be fully understood in its implications for economic growth, territorial resilience and industrial policy. Furthermore, even though connectivity entails bi-directional links – i.e. with regions being simultaneously receivers and senders – attractiveness to foreign capital has long been at the centre of policy attention whilst internationalisation through investment abroad has been disregarded, and sometimes purposely ignored, in regional development policy agendas. We use three broad-brushed European case-studies to discuss some guiding principles for a place-sensitive regional policy eager to integrate the connectivity dimension in pursuing local economic development and territorial equity

Women in top echelon positions and their effects on sustainability: a review, synthesis and future research agenda

This article aims to review and systematize prior works that investigate how the presence of women in top echelon positions of frms afects sustainability and to create an agenda to guide future research in this promising area. In contrast to previous reviews, ours examines how women in top echelon positions afect sustainability by distinguishing both the position women held in the frm (i.e. Board of Directors—BoD, top management team, CEO and relevant committees) and the specifc elements of sustainability (i.e. activity, performance, and disclosure). Our structured systematic review resulted in 187 publications retrieved from Web of Science and Scopus and revealed that the presence of women in top echelon positions is associated with greater engagement in social and environmental projects. Their presence also positively infuences the environmental and social performance and increases the level, quality, and transparency of sustainability disclosure. Furthermore, the presence of women in top echelon positions and the implementation of sustainable activities improve both the frm fnancial performance and value. However, conficting results have also emerged. On the basis of these fndings, research gaps and future research agenda are identifed and presented