What are the economic prospects for Europe in a globalizing world? One popular view suggests that Europe will be swamped by global forces; another suggests the rise of a new localism leading to a Europe of regions. This book argues that neither of these accounts is correct. Through the application of an institutionalist perspective, the authors expertly advance the case that regional economic prosperity will depend upon the degree to which regions are able to mobilize flexible institutional strategies. This timely and insightful book will appeal to a broad range of readers, including students...

In Architectures of Knowledge, Ash Amin and Patrick Cohendet argue that the time is right for research to explore the relationship between two other dimensions of knowledge in order to explain the innovative performance of firms: between knowledge that is 'possessed' and knowledge that is 'practiced' generally within communities of like-minded employees in a firm. The impetus behind this argument is both conceptual and empirical. Conceptually, there is a need to explore the interaction of knowledge that firms possess in the form of established competencies of stored memory, with the knowing...

In Architectures of Knowledge, Ash Amin and Patrick Cohendet argue that the time is right for research to explore the relationship between two other dimensions of knowledge in order to explain the innovative performance of firms: between knowledge that is 'possessed' and knowledge that is 'practiced' generally within communities of like-minded employees in a firm. The impetus behind this argument is both conceptual and empirical. Conceptually, there is a need to explore the interaction of knowledge that firms possess in the form of established competencies of stored memory, with the knowing...

Despite the rhetoric of unification and of a single Europe, Europe is still marked by sharp social and regional disparities. More acutley than ever, Europe faces the dual problem of how to ensure sustained growth and how to combine it with social equity. Cohesion is the term coined by the European Community for its aim of reducing the social and regional gap in the European Union.

Despite the rhetoric of unification and of a single Europe, Europe is still marked by sharp social and regional disparities. More acutley than ever, Europe faces the dual problem of how to ensure sustained growth and how to combine it with social equity. Cohesion is the term coined by the European Community for its aim of reducing the social and regional gap in the European Union.

Talk about the social economy and the term The Third Way has attained a level of household recognition, especially in America and Britain. Academics and commentators have debated the usefulness of the social economy as a restraint on capitalist excesses with some arguing that the third way is but a poor substitute for a welfare state. This book provides an account of real life experience in a social economy. By focusing on new evidence, it analyzes such themes as: the range of academic and policy expectation that have emerged in the developed world; the policies of New Labour in Britain; and...

Part analysis of contemporary change and part vision of the future, post-Fordism lends its name to a set of challenging, essential and controversial debates over the nature of capitalism's newest age. This book provides a superb introduction to these debates and their far-reaching implications, and includes key texts by post-Fordism's major theorists and commentators.

This Reader brings together the exciting and innovative work that has appeared in the last 10 years in the growing field of cultural economy.

• Brings together exciting and innovative work from the last ten years in the emerging field of cultural economy.
  
• Contains a substantial introduction by the editors on the main strands and history of the cultural economy approach.
  
• Shows how the pursuit of prosperity always involves multiple and hybrid orderings that cannot be reduced to either the terms culture or economy.
  
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This book develops a fresh and challenging perspective on the city. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of material and texts, it argues that too much contemporary urban theory is based on nostalgia for a humane, face-to-face and bounded city. Amin and Thrift maintain that the traditional divide between the city and the rest of the world has been perforated through urban encroachment, the thickening of the links between the two, and urbanization as a way of life.


They outline an innovative sociology of the city that scatters urban life along a series of sites and...

How knowledge is created, and how innovation in products and practices occurs, have been long-standing concerns of socio-economists.
This book argues that 'communities of practice', communities and networks of joint enterprise, are the prime site where knowledge and innovation are generated. It sees the everyday interaction that takes place in different working and professional contexts as producing this creativity, learning and knowing through action.
In this book, leading international scholars examine the concept and our understanding of the relationship between situated practice...