Search results

Cross‐national strategy as opposed to country‐by‐country strategy may take place on a regional or on a global basis. This paper examines the European regional office experience of 16 large U.S. firms in terms of (1) the types of responsibilities they handle and why, (2) the problems of removing control and/or duties from country subsidiaries, and (3) the relationship between a regional and global strategy and implementation. The companies' experiences have been quite diverse, thus highlighting multiple opportunities but the need to approach the development of regional operations cautiously. In spite of some problems, the future for European regional management seems bright.

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically explain the significance of discourse for the construction of the legitimacy of place marketing practice, and to illustrate empirically how this is done in a “genre of strategy”.

The paper applies a critical discourse analysis perspective, and utilises a theoretical framework of four legitimation strategies of authorisation, moral evaluation, rationalisation and mythopoesis to analyse how the legitimacy of a place marketing project carried out in the region of North Karelia, Finland, is discursively constructed within strategic documents of the project.

Several discursive legitimation strategies were recognised. The authority of the project was constructed by referring to the organisational context of the project, while rational and moral legitimation strategies drew from hegemonic discourses of regional competitiveness, attractiveness and cooperation. These discourses were further connected to discussions of contemporary regional development in Finland and in Europe.

While the paper underlines the significance of the “genre of strategy” for the discursive legitimation of place marketing projects, it points out that it does not extend to cover the reception or change over time of the legitimation strategies, that should be addressed in further studies.

The paper presents an original perspective on legitimacy of place marketing projects by introducing discourse as a central element in the construction of legitimacy. This is especially useful for critical purposes, as it allows the discourses that legitimise place marketing practice to be placed under scrutiny, hence opening up the possibility for alternative discourses to emerge.

The aim of this paper is to outline what the intended benefits the smart specialization strategy (S3) is meant to create, and through what policy measures; that is, to shed light over what underpinnings S3 is based on, and if the measures based on these can affect the relations between “academia, businesses, and local authorities” – where the public and the private actors might have partly overlapping interests, but with different needs and rationales.

The research design of this paper is based on the industrial marketing and purchasing network approach, that is, the empirical observation that business exchange has a content, which affects and gives imprints on the actors engaged in the exchange. To determine whether the S3 strategy in general, and in the two investigated regions in particular, can affect the embedding of innovations in using, producing and developing settings, and if so how, this study applied the actors–resources–activities model. In addition to investigation of the S3 strategy in general, two case studies were conducted, one each in two European Union regions with rather different business and academic research characteristics: the Marche region in Italy and the Uppsala region in Sweden.

The S3 measures rest on the judgement of which “domains” to support can be made by policy actors without deeper analysis of how the assumed firms representing these domains are related in terms of how resources are combined and activated. Instead, the S3 policy analysis is based on local policy organizations desk table investigations of what appears as innovative. Hence, in practice, the key S3 measure is still to transfer knowledge from the public to the private sector. This entails that support in terms of how to create change in established resources interfaces, which is a main source of innovation to which both established and emerging localized firms are related, remains out of policy sight.

The ambition with this paper is to discuss what changes S3 – with the ambition to develop and match academic research to business needs – implies and what underpinnings it is resting on. Hence, the focus is directed to what new types of policy arrangements are supposed to result in what types of benefits – and last but not least, the ability for these to interfere with businesses which are interconnected across spatial borders.

This study aims to explore how student recruitment practitioners at regional Australian universities strategise student recruitment efforts in Thailand. There is scarce research addressing regional universities, with prior studies focusing on metropolitan universities. Similarly, most prior studies have focused on high-volume markets, with little research exploring emerging markets such as Thailand.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with student recruitment practitioners from regional universities that were responsible for recruiting Thai students. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify key themes.

Regional universities lack strategic ambidexterity in their approach to recruiting international students. They viewed Thailand as requiring longer term investment and were unwilling to dedicate their limited resources towards developing this market at the expense of other markets that would yield enrolments to contribute towards short-term targets.

Implications are provided with relevance to the student recruitment practitioner, with strategic ambidexterity discussed.

The paper fills a gap in the research by exploring international student recruitment and contextualising both regional universities and Thailand as a recruitment market. This study provides useful considerations that may be relevant to other emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to establish whether local authorities in New Zealand report biodiversity-related information and to examine the vehicles through which it is communicated.

This paper uses a keyword search to identify biodiversity reporting across a wide range of data sources, including local authority websites, formal accountability documents, environmental reports, environment and biodiversity management strategies, plans and policies.

Biodiversity-related information was contained in range of documents. Reporting ranged from no mention of the term in existing statutory accountability documents (Annual Plans, Annual Reports, Long-Term Plans [LTPs] and District Plans/Regional Policy Statements), through to a comprehensive stand-alone biodiversity Annual Report and stand-alone biodiversity strategies. Regional and unitary authorities were more likely than territorial authorities to prepare and report biodiversity-related information to stakeholders. There is currently no consistent framework or method to guide local authorities in the presentation of biodiversity-related information. The lack of consistent, comparable information hinders the ability of stakeholders to assess local authority performance in the sustainable management of biodiversity in their district or region.

While this study does not consider quality of reporting, or reporting trends over time, it provides a picture of the “current state of play”. This provides a starting point from which further research into the preparation and reporting of biodiversity information by local authorities can be conducted.

This paper represents the first of its kind within a New Zealand context. It provides an initial insight into whether local authorities prepare and report biodiversity-related information and where this information is presented.

Few would question that one of the most significant determinants of growth in the sport industry — from a sport management, marketing, and sponsorship perspective — has been the inf luence of globalization. Product expansion and communication messages have targeted the 'global consumer,' and the recognition of a 'global brand' has come to epitomize successful sport marketing. Or, has it? Although global management practices present the possibility of expanded consumer markets, a number of marketing strategists have recently begun to question the use of standardized global marketing campaigns that lack national or regional distinctiveness. At issue, is the positioning of 'regionalism' within global sport marketing strategies. This paper will investigate the role of 'regionalism' in sport marketing through; a) an examination of the regional sport marketing strategy of a leading Canadian all-sports television cable network (Rogers Sportsnet) that targets four distinct regions across Canada, and b) a survey of Canadian Generation Y youth sport participation and spectatorship trends across four regions. Implications for regional positioning within sport marketing strategies will also be discussed.

Industrial strategy has been officially out of favour at the national level since the 1980s, although some form of tacit industrial policy has existed for many years under different governments, often partial and usually not codified in official format. The new national Industrial Strategy of 2017 sets out a much clearer intent for how the 2016 Conservative government wants to rebuild the UK industrial base through both national level activity and through local and regional strategies.

At a regional level this is not so new, since the North East has had a variety of regional development strategies and innovation strategies dating back to the 1990s, associated with the implementation of the EU Structural Funds, with the former Regional Development Agency and now with the North East Local Enterprise Partnerships. These typically involved many aspects of the new local Industrial Strategies, so what’s new and what should the region be doing?

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

François Perroux was an economist of strong convictions and fruitful ideas. His belief, which was also shared by other eminent development economists of his time, that backwardness was not a fate is entirely reflected in his development pole theory, which has a prominent place within the regional development theory. This implies that his theory was highly influential, as evidenced by the fact that strategies based on development poles were implemented around the world, in both developed and developing countries. Although these strategies took different forms, largely depending on the specific contexts in which they were applied, there was a common factor in all of them, which was the importance of the direct use of large-scale investment resources to generate the hoped-for structural changes through accelerated economic growth. Looking carefully at the Italian and Brazilian cases, it should be noted that the development pole strategies had, in addition to the use of heavy investment resources already mentioned, some common characteristics, such as: the focus of attention directed toward the backward regions, specifically the Mezzogiorno region in Italy and the Amazon region in Brazil; the fight against regional disparities within both countries through structural change and the strengthening of backward regional economies as an underlying reason; and the active participation of the State in the drawing up and implementation processes of development poles. This chapter aims at comparing the development pole strategies in Italy and Brazil, highlighting similarities and differences of these experiences in triggering the long-awaited regional development.

The purpose of this paper is to study and specify to what extent Iran will succeed in being a regional hegemon. The paper is devoted to clarification of the constitutive elements for regional hegemony. These elements will be related to an actor’s perception of its role and regional perception, and how these hegemons exert power, do these work for the public good in the region (provision) and how this regional power projects power and exerts power to influence others’ preferences and values without reference to violence (projection). For the Middle East, Iran emerged as a key player in most regional conflicts and it tried to increase its sphere of influence as a regional hegemon. Therefore the question here would be: To what extend could Iran succeed in being a regional hegemon and what are the circumstances that could enhance or constrain this Iranian ambition? So the aim of the paper is to look at three dimensions in general and see whether Iran makes a plausible candidate for regional hegemony. The paper outlines the essential traits of a regional hegemon, and the main elements that constitute a regional hegemony such as perception, provision and projection, and then analyze how Iran follows those elements by analyzing internal perceptions of the Iranian elite about Iranian regional role, regional acceptance, provision of public good, projection and finally impact of the relation with external great powers. Through analyzing its regional strategy in Syria and Iraq since 2003, the year of invasion of Iraq, since ever a political vacuum was created, that enabled Iran to extend its regional influence, after the fall of its historical regional rival, Saddam Hussein baathi regime.

The study adopts an analytical framework of analyzing a regional hegemony strategy which is approached by Miriam Prys in her study “Hegemony, domination, detachment: differences in regional powerhood” to study and analyze Iran’s regional behavior as one of regional power that is seeking regional hegemony. This analytical framework is one of the most significant analytical tools that interests in the study of the behavior of regional power and identify the constitutive dimensions for regional hegemony such as self-perception, regional perception, provision and power projection.

The study concludes that there are obstacles completely in front of achieving the Iranian quest to regional hegemony over the Middle East. These are the continuing US involvement in the Middle East and the consequent tense relationship between Iran and the USA. It is most unlikely that Iran will be hegemonic state over the Middle East as long as there are refusal and resistance from other regional states for Iranian regional role; as each of regional powers has tools to contain the influence of the other. The Iranian regional behavior that is sectarianism-based, whether to protect Shiite shrines and holy places or to protect Shiites in the region, such policies deepen the ideological and sectarian conflicts. It also has not provided an attractive cultural model for the peoples of the region.

This paper enhances the deep analysis of the Middle East dynamics through the prospective of regional power. Also, the paper focuses on the analysis of the relation between great power and aspiring regional power and the impact on its strategies.

This study enhances the understanding of how Iranian decision-makers perceive their regional Iranian and the threats. Moreover, the tools that Iran uses its hard power and ideational one to create regional followers and change its allies’ normative and value systems to come in line with its national interests. Moreover, the study tries to measure the actual Iranian influence, its weakness and strength so that the Arab states and the West could behave in a fruitful way.

In the final analysis, the paper offers an insight into the regional behavior and the importance of external power in regional dynamics and to what extent the regional hegemon is applicable to Iran.