Suchergebnisse

"In den letzten Jahren hat die Idee einer regionalen Wettbewerbsfähgkeit erhebliches Interesse unter Akademikern und Wirtschaftspolitikern ausgelöst. Doch trotz der verhältnismäßigen Popularität des Ausdrucks besteht ein überraschender Mangel an Übereinstimmung, was Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von Regionen und Städten eigentlich bedeutet. Dieser Aufsatz bespricht einige der Hauptfragen, die bei der Anwendung des Begriffes auftauchen, und konzentriert sich auf die zentrale Relevanz der Produktivität in der Debatte über regionale Wettbewerbsfähigkeit. Er untersucht sodann die Muster und Dynamik regionaler Produktivität in der gesamten europäischen Union einschließlich. der neuen CEEE Vergrößerungsstaaten, und beschäftigt sich vorallem mit der Frage, ob, und in welchem Ausmaß eine regionale Konvergenz der Produktionshöhen während der beiden letzten Jahrzehnte stattgefunden hat. Es wird festgestellt, daß regionale Konvergenz in den 15 Staaten der EU außergewöhnlich langsam vonstatten gegangen ist, und obschon in letzter Zeit in den CEEE Mitgliedstaaten eine rasche regionale Produktionszunahme festzustellen war, die Möglichkeiten des Aufholens in jenen Staaten nahelegt, dies von einer Abnahme in regionalen Beschäftigungsraten begleitet, und sogar teilweise durch sie erreicht worden zu sein scheint, eine Kombination, die sich auf lange Sicht kaum als nachhaltig erweisen dürfte. Das Fortbestehen regionaler Ungleichheiten der Produktivität in der EU wirft offensichtlich grundlegende Fragen für die Politik auf, und das genau zu dem Zeitpunkt, da Umfang und Zuweisung des Strukturfonds ernsthaft diskutiert werden." (Autorenreferat, IAB-Doku)

The move towards workfare and active labour-market policies is often alleged to be closely associated with the decentralisation and localisation of welfare delivery and agencies. In the United Kingdom, the New Deal for the young unemployed was designed to introduce local flexibility and discretion in delivery to mainstream labour-market policy. We use case studies of five local areas to examine the extent to which the programme has actually been decentralised and benefited from 'local flexibility'. We categorise the arguments for policy decentralisation under four main rationales—improved policy learning and adaptation, stronger partnership building, more innovation, and greater resource targeting—and examine the achievements and limitations of the programme under each. We argue that, although the contractualism of the New Deal has allowed a certain degree of local discretion and cooperation in delivery, there have been strong standardised bureaucratic and financial constraints on the real extent of territorial flexibility. Although the limited decentralisation achieved has yielded some of the predicted benefits, the centralised nature of labour-market policy in the United Kingdom is proving resistant to change and, paradoxically, the programme is producing uneven results across the country. To conclude, we consider whether more local flexibility would be sufficient to improve the performance of the programme.

A fast‐emerging theme in industrial relations research is that industrial relations systems in West European countries are undergoing decentralization, and that the most effective way for unions to meet this challenge is to "go local" themselves. Argues that the significance and implications of decentralization in industrial relations, and the scope and nature of union response, cannot be fully comprehended without according explicit attention to the different local contexts within which these processes are taking place. Uses developments in the British engineering sector to illustrate this argument. Firm‐based surveys and interviews with managers, local union officials and employer association representatives in two case study areas highlight the importance of local workplace cultures and institutional traditions in shaping the contemporary restructuring of industrial politics.

La última década del siglo XX se ha caracterizado por el crecimiento de las cadenas de suministro global, en una amplia variedad de industrias. La gestión de la cadena de suministro global en la industria textil presenta una gran cantidad de desafíos. Este documento presenta un marco para elaborar los problemas relacionados con la comunicación, las relaciones culturales, la tecnología, los procesos de producción, los acuerdos del proveedor y la infraestructura de transporte en la construcción de una cadena de suministro global, en la industria textil, que sirve principalmente al mercado estadounidense. En la sección final del trabajo, se hacen algunas sugerencias para investigaciones futuras en la gestión de la cadena de suministro global en la industria textil.

AbstractThe global financial crisis of just over a decade ago exposed longer-term systemic problems in global capitalism of which two of the most prominent are the slowdown in the underlying trend rate of productivity growth, alongside a rise in economic and spatial inequalities in many advanced economies. The Covid-19 pandemic looks set to further amplify these problems. This Editorial begins by discussing the scale of the productivity slowdown and of the widening inequalities that have emerged, particularly with regard to their spatial dimension: that is how the uneven and slow development of productivity and rise in inequalities have played out across and within regions and cities. It then briefly considers underlying factors that lie behind these trends, including financialisation / financial globalization, the diminishing role of organised labour, segmentation of the labour market favouring workers who play a key role in financialisation, together with the increasing polarisation within societies according to skill and, crucially, the impact of changing industrial composition particularly as it relates to the rise of the high-tech sectors. The Editorial then examines in what ways the slowdown of productivity and widening of economic and spatial inequalities, may be interrelated, and questions the notion of any efficiency-equity trade-off. Lastly, it considers whether the 'inclusive growth' agenda can potentially reconcile the two ambitions of improving productivity performance and lessening inequalities, reflecting on what inclusive growth could mean, and what it could imply in terms of policy. Thus far, it appears that an inclusive growth agenda has only gained some traction at the subnational level, which seems to reflect – at least in part – attempts by cities and regions to address gaps in policy left by national governments.