European Urban and Regional Studies

This article focuses on the emergence of a new international division of labour in the auto parts industry. Its first section examines the hypothesis that the shift to modular production offers a chance to modify value chain geography inasmuch as modularity causes new opportunities and constraints in geographic proximity terms. An analytical matrix is provided and applied to New Accession Countries, with special consideration being given to French suppliers' circumstances due to the requirement that host country characteristics and company specificities be analysed simultaneously. The second section tests this matrix using statistical data and culminates in a case-study. It will be demonstrated that New Accession Countries are being integrated with the rest of the Continent, due to firms' ongoing search for location-related advantages and because of a tightening/easing interaction that is associated with proximity constraints.

The article deals with the impact of the emerging new division of labour between Western and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) on work and employment, both in the Western and CEE countries. Major points of discussion will be the hypothesis of a `hollowingout' of the Western European auto industry, and the hypothesis of a `regime flight'; that is, the claim that companies use CEE locations to escape the collectively regulated work models of Western Europe. The article draws from our own empirical research, including company case-studies in Western and Eastern auto plants, and on statistical analysis. The main conclusions are: in CEE countries, an upgrading process of production sites can be observed, which challenges the view of an emerging `high end/low end' division of labour between the West and the East.While relocation has led to some losses of low-skill jobs in Western Europe, the overall effect of the expansion of the automotive industry to CEE on growth and employment in Western Europe was positive.The impact of low-cost component imports from CEE countries has increased the competitiveness of the German firms, which are by far the main investor in CEE countries. Our case-studies reveal no trend towards regime flight from Western European work models, but management threats of relocation have become commonplace and have led to a renegotiation of work models in Western European countries. In CEE countries, the work models of automobile companies more and more are oriented at a high-road path.This development is fostered by the companies' responses to the problems of migration and the increasing shortage of skilled labour.

This article draws on the global value-chain approach to investigate industrial upgrading in the automotive industry of four Central European (CE) countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. We review post-1990 production trends and the associated changes in the geography of automobile production in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) based on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI).To evaluate industrial upgrading, we examine the changes in the international trade of CE countries with automotive products classified in three value-added classes between 1996 and 2006, and we consider the increasing location of automotive design in CE by foreign investors.We classify CE automobile assembly plants into four types based upon the role of local design, local content, and their links with domestic economies. Based on the results of the analysis, we consider the effects of FDI and industrial upgrading on the role of CE in the European automotive production system.

This article provides an account of the temporary staffing industry outside its two largest markets, the UK and the US. It argues that there is greater national variation in industry characteristics than has generally been acknowledged, using the example of Sweden to illustrate the importance of understanding staffing industries in relation to the regulatory context in which they are embedded. Drawing on secondary materials and interviews with senior officials in transnational and domestic temporary staffing agencies, labour unions, industry trade bodies and government departments, the article asserts that the temporary staffing industry should be understood as an active agent of labour market restructuring. It provides a detailed analysis of the Swedish industry's distinct periods of expansion, charting its legalization and subsequent growth in the context of a highly regulated labour market. In conclusion, the article makes two key points. First, the Swedish temporary staffing market is the product of a particular social democratic welfare state regime and the roles played by the different social partners which lead to the production of a managed flexibility. Second, the particularities of the Swedish system, and the need for transnational staffing agencies to adapt their activities, underline how firms both shape, and are shaped by, the economic and social characteristics and dynamics that exist in the territories in which they invest.

Despite various reasons for the relatively low levels of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow into Turkey throughout the postwar period, Istanbul has proved relatively successful in attracting inward FDI in services in recent years. Increased production by both foreign and domestic manufacturers in the wider Marmara region has also resulted in a concentration of service sector firms in the greater Istanbul metropolitan area. Examination of the profile of foreign investors and investment categories reveals that Germany and the Netherlands remain major sources of investment, and that investment from these two countries shows the most marked signs of functional linkage between manufacturing and service projects. This growth of functional linkage, exemplified by the increased importance of logistics operations, may represent the removal of one more factor inhibiting inward investment into Turkey on a scale appropriate to its size and growth potential.

This article aims to analyse the regional dynamics of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), an activity usually associated with the so-called knowledge-based economy (KBE). As will be seen later, most of the studies of this sector refer to central and metropolitan regions but little has been said about the characteristics and nature of its growth in other regions.A study of the Spanish case has been made which tries to identify specific patterns of KIBS development in different kinds of regions. The results obtained indicate that KIBS interregional trade decisively shapes KIBS regional growth in such a way that, on the one hand, it contributes to the concentration of these activities in metropolitan and well-developed regions and, on the other hand, it makes KIBS growth in less developed regions (LDRs) externally dependent.