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Neo‐liberal policies have had a profound effect on the organization of policing in Canada by rationalizing provincial and federal initiatives that off‐load policing costs to municipal and regional councils. This paper aims to comparatively analyze the effect of these initiatives on service delivery for regional versus non‐regional police services.

Four measures were used to assess efficiency: per capita cost, cost per criminal code offence, number of officers per 100,000 population, and number of support staff per 100,000 population. Three measures were used to assess effectiveness: violent crime clearance rate, property crime clearance rate, and total criminal code clearance rate.

Analysis of the data reveals that, despite claims surrounding regionalization, regional police services are not demonstrably any more effective or efficient than non‐regional services.

Utilizes official crime data and police expenditure statistics. A national survey of police service delivery and citizen satisfaction is needed. Practical implications – These results can inform municipal and town council decisions about regional (or provincial contract) versus local police service provision. Originality/value – The first comprehensive comparative Canadian study on the efficiency and effectiveness of police regionalization. The article empirically challenges the purported relative effectiveness and efficiency of larger regional police services versus smaller non‐regional services in Canada.

This paper aims to examine the strategic role of world-class universities and the international academic profession in the regionalisation project of China’s Greater Bay Area (GBA). It illustrates the way in which the case of the GBA regionalisation project offers a potentially rich empirical example for adding contextual understanding to the literature of the Triple Helix model, which largely draws on inductive theorising from western successful innovation cases. The GBA regionalisation processes will provide a wealth of empirical cases for identifying circumstances that address tensions and increase interactions in the Triple Helix relationship of university, government and industry for fostering knowledge synergies.

Focusing on the case of Hong Kong, it engages in policy and stakeholder analysis and addresses three key research questions: What are the competitive advantages and potential strategic role of Hong Kong's universities and academic profession in the regionalisation of innovation systems in the GBA? What is the role of the governments in the regionalisation processes? What are the expected opportunities and challenges offered by the GBA policy initiatives for the future development of Hong Kong’s universities and academic profession?

Hong Kong, given its status as an international finance centre and global city with intense internationalisation and established judicial system operated by the rule of law, will contribute to the GBA development by leveraging on its edge in scientific research and development and international networks of academic research through the world-class academic profession. Scientists and researchers in the city, possessing the competitive advantages of basic research and international partnerships, are highly regarded by the central government. The engagement of Hong Kong’s scientific talents, can play an important role in achieving China’s aspiration of becoming a global technology power.

Analysis of this article implies that the GBA concept is currently China’s ambitious but vague economic plan. The opportunities in which key node cities and knowledge/ innovation clusters will capture and capitalise from the regional ‘co-opetitive” ’entrepreneurial ecosystem are still unclear. The future of the GBA regionalisation is so dynamic and open-ended that grounded concepts related to the governance innovation/ discourse of ‘one country two systems’ and social connectedness and capitalisation with Chinese characteristics will help in making sense of the contextualisation of a Chinese regional innovation system and enhancing the sophistication of reconceptualisation of the Triple Helix model.

This article will add to the literature some novel contextualised knowledge about the GBA’s potential triple-helix relationship between government-university-industry in the 21st century. The empirical example of China’s GBA will also shed light on a new understanding of the role of international social capital in the entrepreneurial knowledge economy, dynamics between basic and applied research, and a synergistic interface between regionalisation and national innovation system.

The debate about global integration (standardisation) versus responsiveness (adaptation) has recently been supplemented with perspectives that emphasise regionalisation. And while the discussion has also been extended from manufacturing to services, there are specific sectors and emergent topics that have not yet received much attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore how accounting firms (The Big Four) and particularly their sustainability services fit in the globalisation/regionalisation/localisation spectrum, and appear to standardise or adapt in key countries in various regions around the world.

Examined are the Big Four accounting firms in general, and their sustainability services in 15 countries in five regions and globally, as presented on their respective web sites.

While overall the Big Four are somewhere between globalisation and bi‐regionalisation, the traditional independent member firm structure appears to prevail in service offerings, as sustainability services do not exhibit standardisation and there are hardly signs of regionalisation/globalisation. This seems to result from special characteristics of services, such as inseparability of production and consumption, and local requirements regarding sustainability.

This exploratory study can be a starting point for further in‐depth analyses into sustainability and/or services sector(s), and the way in which they figure in current realities of international business.

The paper gives insight into the variety of sustainability services around the world, as well as the way in which the accounting firms have dealt with global issues that also have local dimensions.

The paper sheds light on a topic in a sector so far unexplored in the globalisation/regionalisation debate, bringing new dimensions and perspectives to it.

The purpose of this paper is to see if economic regionalization in Asia is a trend for the future, and if it heralds educational regionalization, thus uniting economic internationalization and education.

This has been shown to be the case in the European Union where it is still a work in progress and may well be sliding backward, and it is certainly the case in Asia where despite or perhaps because of the plethora of regional organizations (well over 100), policies and programs, to say nothing of the continuing historical tensions between nations and sub‐regions, the process of harmonization has lurched along and questions remain as to its long‐term substance.

It is suggested that the proposition of these goals is much easier than the implementation for a variety of political, economic, and cultural reasons.

In this study a conceptual framework utilizing the concepts of centripetal and centrifugal forces is introduced to facilitate a focus on the forces and factors affecting regionalization and harmonization of higher education in the Asian region.

This paper seeks to examine evidence of new forms of regionalisation in both theory and practice, and the relationship between the two. In so doing, it aims to demonstrate the essential complementarity, rather than widely argued alternativeness, of both conventional and new forms of inter‐local collaboration at the regional level. The paper also seeks to demonstrate the importance of institutional and local legacies for the nature of regionalisation.

The paper is based on interviews by the author with economic policy makers in several city regions in Europe and North America over the last three years, and the results of a series of workshops involving many of these very policy makers.

There is growing evidence of new forms of inter‐local region building being adopted by policy makers in response to a perceived need to maintain/improve economic competitiveness. Concerns about “giving away” powers and resources when engaging in usual conventional, formalised, fixed forms of regionalisation have created reluctance among many local actors to do so. The need to be more responsive to rapidly changing economic conditions, coupled to a realisation of the need for concerted action, have encouraged economic policy makers to adopt new, more experimental forms of region‐wide collaboration.

The findings not only challenge established practices and a conventional focus on planning and technocratic views of “regions”, but also raise questions about the prevalent regulation theory‐inspired arguments in academic debate. Instead, “virtual regionalisation” seems to open new opportunities for defining meaning and operation of “regions” and “regionalism”, with the different backgrounds in Europe and North America allowing a somewhat more “open mind” in the latter than the former.

The paper illustrates that in many regions in Europe and North America there is now a multitude of actors and organisations seeking to promote regional competitiveness and growth.

Is it regionalization or globalization that more accurately depicts the state of the global economy? Exports and foreign direct investments (FDI) data are analyzed with the aim of answering the question and determining how intra‐ and inter‐regional integration has changed over time.

To address the research questions, this paper covers the following. First, it takes a longitudinal perspective in examining the changes taking place in exports and FDI at the regional level. Second, it draws strategic business and marketing implications of this development.

The results show a trend toward regionalization in the Quad (North America, Western Europe, Asia, and Latin America), especially with respect to exports data.

Findings, strategic implications, and directions for future research are presented.

The fast-developing processes of globalization, with increased political and economic interdependence, along with competition; regionalization dynamics revealing more localized ambitions and either constraining or advancing intentions and policies; and Europeanization as a particular dynamic related to the EU role as a global actor, applied to the Polish post-communist transition, constitute our vectors of analysis. This essay aims to address the simultaneously interconnected and heterogeneous responses of Polish post-communist course of change to global and regional processes, including European integration. In this line of research, we search for answers to how the linkages among globalization, regionalization, and Europeanization work in the case of Polish post-communist transition. This will be pursued through an analysis of the democratization course, mainly regarding political, institutional and social aspects, and economic integration. Despite elements of complementarity and resistance in the working relationships among the three concepts, which are highly debatable, we find they have substantial implications on Polish policy-making. These implications include adjustment and bargaining between demands and concessions, resulting in gains and losses, though despite the negative effects associated and acknowledged, the fact of Poland pursuing the course of integration in the EU reveals an equation of cost–benefit, in favor of the EU.

Despite the multitude of regional-based collaborations in higher education, regionalism theories have received relatively little attention in the literature on higher education. In view of this gap, this chapter seeks to make a case for the study of regionalism and explores how this field could enrich higher education research. This chapter discusses the context of the rise of the regional landscape vis-à-vis the acceleration of globalisation and internationalisation of higher education. It further probes into theoretical and empirical insights, elucidating in particular core regionalism concepts, theories and approaches within the more recent ‘turns’ in regionalism. Empirical cases from regions across the world are presented to help expound on the conceptual points raised.

This study presents evidence of increasing regionalization of international trade among 10 South American countries from 1980 to 2001. Regionalization of trade in South America is best described as an increasing trade among Spanish-speaking countries and increasing trade within the two regional agreements, the Andean Community and Mercosur. There is also evidence of border erosion in the continent, especially among the Mercosur members. These results emerge from a simple statistical analysis and are also economically significant when tested in a consistent gravity equation that controls for a set of macroeconomic and geographic variables.

We investigate the internationalization pattern and performance of Indian firms. We first discuss the regionalization trend evident in the internationalization of Indian manufacturing and service firms over time. Next, we empirically test the impact of degree of internationalization on firm financial performance of Indian firms. We also test the moderation effect of business group affiliation on the internationalization–performance relationship. We find that Indian outward foreign direct investment has been shifting from developing to developed economies over time. Also, firm performance of Indian firms is positively related to the degree of internationalization and that service firms profit more than manufacturing firms from internationalization. Business group affiliation reduces the positive effect of internationalization on firm performance.