International regulation and regional development: Consequences of the single European market for small and medium sized enterprises in Portugal

In seeking to understand contexts for regional development an increasingly important element is the growing influence of international institutions and agreements in the regulation of economic systems. Within Europe the economic liberalization and increased market competition encouraged by the Single European Market (SEM) has been widely predicted to benefit larger elements of capital and core regions of economic activity at the expense of Europe's smaller firms and less favoured peripheral regions. Through analysis of results from empirical research, this paper will analyze the impact of the SEM on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in north and central Portugal. The significance of sectoral and spatial variations in impact are examined by considering two industrial sectors, food and clothing, and the effectiveness of firms’ responses and policy initiatives in mediating the potentially negative impacts of Single Market competition are evaluated.     

浅析企业伦理文化对现代企业的发展的作用

现代企业的市场竞争日趋白热化,而且竞争已经渗透过表层,深入至企业内核。市场不仅要求企业在价格、服务方面拿出相应的实力去竞争,更要求企业内部形成一种特定的企业文化。对于企业管理者而言,企业的多元化发展已经使得他们可以从哲学角度深入企业管理运作,形成自有的企业伦理文化。〈br〉 本文将从企业伦理的新时期演绎出发,对于我国现代企业伦理文化的出现和发展进行分析。由此探讨出企业伦理文化的发展轨迹,并尝试给出企业伦理文化对现代企业发展作用和发展前景评估。     

Tourism and cross-border regional development: insights in European contexts

This paper aims to structurally analyse the role of tourism in regional development processes in European cross-border regions with different historical development paths. Departing from an institutional perspective, the research is based on comparison of the position of tourism in region-building processes in the newly developing German–Czech cross-border region and the more ‘mature’ German–Belgian borderlands. Results indicate that the development of local cross-border tourism projects is no guarantee for positive destination-wide regional development impacts. In some cases, these projects may even reinforce asymmetrical socio-economic development directions of neighbouring borderlands. Rather, the socio-spatially equitable distribution of tourism benefits in cross-border contexts depends on several process-based aspects. These include the presence of ‘thick’ (cross-border) institutional arrangements, multi-scalar representation of tourism stakeholders in decision-making processes and a transversal position of tourism in regional development strategies. However, both with cross-border institutional ‘under-mobilization’ (Germany–Czech Republic) and with institutional ‘over-mobilization’ (Germany–Belgium), the informal network position of institutional brokers proved key for safeguarding the integrative character of tourism in the inevitably complex cross-border region-building process.     

Impact of European Union development subsidies on Hungarian regions

Since the collapse of the communist system, regional inequalities have increased in Central European Countries. This paper describes an assessment of the impacts of regional development programmes on the development of Hungarian regions at a highly disaggregated level between 2002 and 2008. We construct a multi-dimensional composite indicator to estimate the overall development of rural regions and capture social, economic and environmental dimensions. The impacts of rural development programmes were investigated through counterfactual analysis in combination with Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences approaches. There has been considerable variation with increasing concentration in the level of subsidies distributed during the analysed period. From a policy perspective, the results are disappointing. Irrespective of the subsidy measures or methodology employed, the impact of the former is very close to zero or non-significant. Our findings cast serious doubt on the effectiveness of development policy and the long-run convergence of European regions.     

Areas of large enterprise and industrial districts in the development of post-war Italy: A preliminary survey

Our aim in this article is to lay some statistical and theoretical foundations for an understanding of Italian post-war economic growth, by devoting special attention to what has happened in the hundred different “Italies” that go to make up the mosaic of this country. We have concentrated our analysis on comparing “areas of large enterprise” with “industrial districts” through a distinction between district provinces (IDPs), large enterprise provinces (LEPs) and other provinces (OPs). We investigate manufacturing industry by means of in depth analyses of trends in employment and value added, as well as through breakdowns of export flows and income and prosperity levels. Since the end of World War II it appears that Italian economic growth has largely been formed by the constant, massive flow of exports of personal and household goods and light mechanically-engineered products, that a sizeable flow of exports is attributable to growth in the industrial districts, and that although the income gap between the different parts of the country has not been eliminated, growth by the industrial districts and the policy of industrialization in Southern Italy have together engineered a major territorial dispersion of both light and heavy industry. However, heavy industry and high-tech large Italian companies have found increasing difficulties and even lost many of the positions they once held. Our survey indicates that a policy for industrial development in Italy must take account of the weakness of the heavy industry sector along with the features and requirements of industrial districts.     

Criticism of Henry II's expedition to Ireland in William of Canterbury's miracles of St Thomas Becket

The long collection of miracles of St Thomas Becket written by William, a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, between 1172 and c.1179 is, like many other examples of the genre, a rich source for attitudes towards sanctity, relics, and pilgrimage. A far more unusual feature of William's text is the author's criticism of the recent English presence in Ireland. William's comments on this score amount to a loaded stretching of the normal parameters of his textual medium, resulting in an evaluative engagement with current affairs of the sort that we would more normally associate with reflective forms of history-writing. William's criticism focused in particular upon the expedition to Ireland undertaken by King Henry II (October 1171–April 1172), inverting the very rhetoric that Henry had used to justify his Irish adventure. William was not himself Irish, as has sometimes been supposed, nor was he registering his institution's frustrations about its exclusion from the new ecclesiastical order in Ireland, as might be implied by the traditional but questionable ‘Canterbury plot’ interpretation of the much-debated papal bull Laudabiliter. Instead, William was skilfully engaging with current debates about the rectitude of Henry II's Irish expedition, and more broadly contesting emerging prejudices about England's ‘uncultivated’ neighbours, in order to effect a subtle critique of the king's involvement in Becket's murder.     

Regional networks of small and medium sized enterprises: evidence from the Metropolitan Area of Ottawa in Canada1

Innovation is currently seen as a process which results from various interactions among different actors. Recent theories of innovation emphasize clusters and geographical proximity as loci of knowledge, development and exchange, critical to higher levels of innovation and regional growth. As a consequence, there is a territorial dimension to innovation. This article investigates the innovation activities and networking of 53 small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ottawa, Canada. Taking its point of departure from the proliferating literature on the localized nature of innovation processes, the article sets out to answer three empirical questions: How intensively are SMEs engaging in innovation activities? To what extent do they interact during innovation process activities? What is the relevance of spatial proximity in networking, and what is the relative importance of localized cooperation as compared to non‐localized cooperation. The results revealed SMEs rely as much on external networks of customers and suppliers, as they do on ones based in their own region, and that these are considerably more important, than other potential sources of ideas, to the innovation process within the firm.     

Application of European regional development fund for objective 2 in Catalonia: planning,monitoring and evaluation

This paper describes the administration procedures of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) for Objective 2 in Catalonia. The paper shows also that the flow of an average of 100 million ECU per year from this Fund from 1989–1993, despite having a relatively slight impact on the Catalan GDP, has contributed to solving some of the bottlenecks in the Catalan economy.