Why do companies relocate? The German discourse on relocation

"Das Paper beschäftigt sich mit der Rolle des Diskurses und dessen Hauptprotagonisten bei der Förderung von Entscheidungen über Betriebsverlagerungen. Wenn die Wirtschaftsbedingungen ungewiss sind, ist der Diskurs ein 'Ort', an dem Ideen und Paradigmen sowie mögliche Handlungsoptionen 'kreiert' werden. Da Interessen nicht als gegeben angenommen werden können, sondern vielmehr als 'sozial konstruiert' betrachtet werden sollten, trägt der Diskurs zur Definition der Interessen von Akteuren bei, indem er Argumente und Kausalbeziehungen zwischen dem Funktionieren des Marktes und dem individuellen Handeln auswählt, verstärkt bzw. legitimiert. Einige Umfragen in deutschen Unternehmen zeigen, dass die Vorteile für Firmen nicht so eindeutig sind, obwohl die Anzahl der Produktionsverlagerungen wächst. Das Paper argumentiert, dass die öffentliche Debatte in deutschen Zeitungen und Businessmagazinen seit den 1990er-Jahren die Entscheidungsprozesse über Produktionsverlagerungen beeinflusst haben könnte, indem die Nachteile der Produktion in Deutschland stark betont sowie potenzielle Konflikte und zusätzliche Kosten ausgeblendet wurden, die für die Firmen bei der Produktionsverlagerung zusätzlich entstehen." (Autorenreferat)"The paper examines the role of discourse in supporting firm's decisions to relocate and how main actors influence such discourse. If there is uncertainty about the general functioning of the economy, discourse is the place where ideas and paradigms, and possible options of behavior, are created. Since interests are not given a priori but are socially constructed, discourse contributes to their definition by selecting, amplifying and legitimizing arguments and causal relationships between the functioning of the market and individual behavior. Some surveys of German companies show that while relocation is increasing, the advantages for firms are less clear than expected. The main argument of the paper is that the public debate in German newspapers and the business press since the 1990s could have influenced the processes of decision-making over relocation by amplifying the disadvantages of remaining in Germany and neglecting the conflicts and additional costs arising for companies by relocating their production activities." (author's abstract

Cost Reduction through Relocation, or the Construction of Myths in Discourse

The findings of recent studies into relocation by German companies are puzzling: companies relocate because they are willing to cut costs, but entrepreneurs and managers seem to have failed to predict further and sometimes fatal costs associated with relocation. This paper sheds light on why relocation has become a general trend among German companies, despite those inefficiencies and costs. It points to the role of the discourse in creating the myth of relocation as a strategy to reduce costs. Discourse can in fact help to diffuse ideas independently of their empirical truth and give voice to influential actors who are able to induce isomorphic processes. In order to give an account of why companies' decisions to relocate have become so popular in Germany, regardless of their economic soundness, the paper draws on an analysis of German newspapers and business press that were published between January 1990 and July 2005

Conversion as a mechanism of hybridization: the institutional transfer of industrial relations and vocational training from western to eastern Germany

Looking back over the two decades since German unification, the main questions I want to answer are to what extent and through what mechanisms the transfer of the system of industrial relations and vocational training—two cornerstones of the West German model—has occurred in eastern Germany. The literature argues that institutional transfer very often leads to a process of hybridization in institutions. However, the concept of hybridization has also been criticized as being mainly descriptive and vague about the actual mechanisms of hybridization. In this paper I argue that these mechanisms should be specified further and suggest that the hybridization approach can be fruitfully linked to recent theories of institutional change. As far as the transfer of industrial relations and vocational training from western to eastern Germany is concerned, I argue in particular that hybridization has mainly occurred through what institutional literature has recently defined as the mechanism of conversion.

A Geography of \u201cIdentity\u201d Trust in Italy

The chapter addresses the definition of the concept of trust, proposing two interpretations: trust as \u201ccalculation\u201d, based on an assessment of the risk involved in trust, and trust as \u201cidentity\u201d, understood as faith in the unknown other. Two aspects of the concept which connect well with the two main conceptions of social capital: social capital as an individual resource \u2013 \ue0 la Bourdieu (1980) \u2013 and social capital as a collective resource (civicness) \u2013 \ue0 la Putnam (1993) \u2013 with its connotations of bridging and bonding. After addressing the problem of empirical observation of the two faces of trust, the paper focuses on an analysis of \u201cidentitary\u201d trust in Italy, by means of a cross-national and cross-regional comparative analysis over an extended period. The main results highlight the deficit of trust characterising Italy as against the principal European countries and the steady levelling out \u2013 in relation to previous analyses (Putnam 1993) \u2013 of the differences between the various regions of Italy

Institutions and Sectoral Logics in Creative Industries: The media cluster in Cologne

Institutional actors at the regional or local level increasingly see the development of the creative industry sector as a means of improving local competitiveness. However, research on relations between institutions and local development barely considers the interaction between policies and a sectoral logic of work organization and labor-market functioning. On the basis of qualitative research on the locally clustered media sector in Cologne, Germany, we argue that a sectoral logic which relies strongly on the use of networks can hinder or ‘convert’, the course of policies aimed at improving the skill supply, and thereby produce unintended effects

Cultivating Europe: Democratic Europe - Social Europe - Educated Europe

Cultivating Europe: Democratic Europe - Social Europe - Educated Europ