COVID-19 has turned cities’ greatest assets into disadvantages

The Covid-19 outbreak has radically altered our conception of large cities. The density and connectedness of urban areas, once viewed as key economic strengths, now appear as weaknesses that put citizens at greater risk from the virus. Rune Dahl Fitjar asks whether this change in perceptions is likely to be temporary, or whether we may see a lasting shift toward a less global, less urban and ultimately less prosperous world

Covid-19 has turned cities' main economic assets into their worst enemies

The Covid-19 outbreak has radically altered our conception of large cities. The density and connectedness of urban areas, once viewed as key economic strengths, now appear as weaknesses that put citizens at greater risk from the virus. Rune Dahl Fitjar asks whether this change in perceptions is likely to be temporary, or whether we may see a lasting shift toward a less global, less urban and, ultimately less prosperous world

The density and connectedness of cities now appear as weaknesses

Will this be temporary or will we see a lasting shift toward a less global, less urban and less prosperous world? asks Rune Dahl Fitja

When local interaction does not suffice: Sources of firm innovation in urban Norway

The geographical sources of innovation of firms have been hotly debated. While the traditional view is that physical proximity within city-regions is key for the innovative capacity of firms, the literature on 'global pipelines' has been stressing the importance of establishing communication channels to the outside world. This paper uses a specifically tailored survey of the level of innovation of 1604 firms of more than 10 employees located in the five largest Norwegian city-regions (Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim, and Kristiansand) in order to determine a) the geographical dimension of the sources of innovation and b) the factors behind the propensity to innovate in Norwegian firms. The results stress that while interaction with a multitude of partners within Norwegian city-regions or with other national partners has a negligible effect on firm innovation, those firms with a greater diversity of international partners tend to innovate more and introduce more radical innovations. The results also highlight that the roots of this greater innovative capacity lie in a combination of firm – size of firms, share of foreign ownership, and sector – and cultural – the level of open-mindedness of managers – characteristics.Innovation; radical innovation; interaction; pipelines; partnerships; firms; city-regions; Norway

Prosperous peripheries: Cross-sectional and longitudinal explorations of the determinants of regionalism in western Europe.

The study aims to explain differences in the levels of regionalism both between different regions and within individual regions over time. The existing literature focuses on globalisation and European integration as the main causes of changes in regionalism across time, treating the phenomenon mainly as a part of broader political developments. By overlooking internal developments in individual regions in this way, it is impossible to explain differences between regions. Another main strand of the literature focuses on cultural and ethnic differences, but these differences tend to be relatively static and thus unsuitable for explaining variation within individual regions over time. Instead, the thesis looks for answers to these questions in regional economies. One major hypothesis is that economically strong but politically peripheral regions will be better equipped to challenge the central state and have stronger incentives to desire control over their own resources. A quantitative study across 212 Western European regions seeks to test the relationship between regionalism and a set of common explanatory variables, including the economic strength of the region. Variables such as cultural distinctiveness, geographical position, economic development, globalisation and Europeanisation are tested for their effects on the regional identities expressed by the population. The findings of the quantitative study form the basis of a model of the causes of regionalism, which is further explored through case studies of Scotland and Rogaland, two regions that have experienced growth across time both in terms of economic development and globalisation. On this basis, the model predicts a growth in regionalism across time in both regions. These predictions are tested and confirmed, and an exploratory qualitative study examines why economic development and globalisation may have led to growth in regionalism in the two regions

Regional skill relatedness: towards a new measure of regional related diversification

This paper proposes a novel index of regional skill-relatedness and calculates this measure for all Norwegian labour-market regions. Studies of regional related diversification rely on measures of related variety, which build on the industry classification hierarchy. However, the growing literature identifying similarities in knowledge and competences across industries demonstrates that these classifications fail to identify a great deal of actual skill relatedness, and that measures based on empirical measures of industry relatedness are required. The skill relatedness measure builds on labour mobility flows across industries to develop a relatedness matrix for Norwegian industries. It further uses social network analysis to identify the number of other regional industries to which each industry in a particular region is related. Comparing this measure to the related variety index, the analysis shows that the two measures are highly correlated, but that the regional skill relatedness index is able to identify more of the relatedness across industries. In particular, the related variety index tends to underestimate the level of relatedness in many of Norway’s most technologically sophisticated manufacturing regions, whereas these rank highly in the regional skill relatedness index. Consequently, the regional skill relatedness index represents a promising new tool for identifying relatedness in regional systems.acceptedVersio

Rootless or rooted in regions? International researchers and local engagement

As universities have internationalised and academic careers have come to encompass relocation across countries and continents, it has often been argued that universities and their researchers have lost the ability to address the issues prevalent in their local geographies. Drawing on survey evidence, Kwadwo Atta-Owusu and Rune Dahl Fitjar explore this relationship and what it means for how universities can support engagement at the local and regional scale

Networking, context and firm-level innovation: Cooperation through the regional filter in Norway

The paper assesses the role for innovation of one aspect which has been generally overlooked by evolutionary economic geography: context. It analyses how context shapes the impact of collaboration on firm-level innovation for 1604 firms located in the five largest city regions of Norway. Specifically, the analysis shows how the benefits to firms of collaborating within regional, national, and international innovation networks are affected by the knowledge endowments of the region within which the firm is located. Using a logit regression analysis, we find, first, that only national and international networking have a significant positive impact on the likelihood of innovation (the former only for process innovation), whereas the regional knowledge endowments have no direct effect. Second, regional cooperation is particularly effective in regions with high investments in R&D, whereas international cooperation is important in regions with an educated workforce – and regional and national collaboration may be ineffective in such cases. We conclude that, in the case of Norway, context is essential in determining the capacity of firms to set up networks and innovate. Regions with an educated workforce can use the resulting absorptive capacity to successfully assimilate knowledge being diffused through global pipelines from faraway places. However, this absorptive capacity is likely to be heavily filtered if regional firms mainly rely on internal connections within Norway.acceptedVersio

What motivates academics for external engagement? Exploring the effects of motivational drivers and organizational fairness

Academics have different motivations for external engagement, including to acquire external resources for research (research advancement motivation), to contribute to society (prosocial motivation), or to acquire monetary benefits (pecuniary motivation). Universities also have varying policies for rewarding external engagement. This paper examines the relationship between academics’ motivations for engaging, their perceptions of the fairness of their universities’ policies, and their actual level of external engagement. Most academics consider contributing to the betterment of society as the most important reason for engagement, followed by the advancement of their research. Conversely, few academics consider obtaining personal income to be important. The perceived importance of all three motivations is positively associated with actual engagement behavior. Notably, the strength of research advancement motivation is more closely associated with external engagement than the strength of pecuniary motivation. However, perceptions of organizational fairness are not related to external engagement.publishedVersio

Incentivizing knowledge exchange engagement: direct and indirect benefits of external engagement

Engagement in knowledge exchange (KE) with external actors has become widely accepted as an integral mission of universities. However, research and teaching performance remain more important for career progression, while engagement activities are more weakly institutionalized. This raises the question of why academics participate in knowledge exchange engagement activities. This paper examines to what extent academics perceive that they are rewarded directly for KE by their university and to what extent they perceive to benefit in terms of their performance in other missions (research and teaching). Furthermore, we examine how these perceptions are associated with actual engagement behavior. We use data from a sample of academics in seven European universities to examine whether direct and indirect benefits from engagement are linked to engagement in a broad range of KE activities. The results suggest that direct university rewards are associated with less engagement in KE activities, while perceived indirect benefits are associated with more engagement. These relationships are particularly strong in STEM fields.acceptedVersio