Persistence of innovative activities in times of crisis: the case of the Basque Country

By drawing on a large sample of Spanish manufacturing and service sector firms, the changes in firms’ innovation expenditures that have taken place since the onset of the 2008 economic crisis are analysed, as is the relationship between such changes and the location of the company. Special focus is placed on firms in the Basque Country. Compared to other Spanish regions, the Basque Country differs in terms of its fiscal status, its earlier experience of crises, its innovation performance and its greater focus on innovation-related policies. Our results show that the impact of the crisis on firms’ innovation expenditures in the Basque Country has indeed differed from that in comparable Spanish regions. Even after controlling for sectoral differences and for detailed characteristics at the firm level, firms with R&D employment in the Basque Country showed a significantly lower probability of abandoning innovation activities and even a somewhat higher probability of increasing their innovation efforts. This regional effect is especially significant for small and medium-sized enterprises.     

Beobachtungen zur überlieferungsgeschichte einiger lieder des Mi la ras pa'i mGur 'bum

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Innovative Trends in Women's and Gender Studies of the National Socialist Era

The text is less a review of the new literature than a reflectionon significant and innovative current trends in the historiographyon women and gender in the National Socialist era. The firstpart deals with various women's activities within milieus andprofessions, including their room for manoeuvre: midwives, socialworkers, female Nazi functionaries, and female auxiliary workersof the Nazi Wehrmacht. The second part of the article addressesspecific features of biopolitics, targeted not only againstJews but also against asocial women, homosexuals and prostitutes.It also looks at visual images of bodies. Although the Nazistried to create strongly determined binaries to categorize ‘we’and ‘the others’ in the arts and other propagandamaterial, there existed, in fact, a broad spectrum of body images,especially among media stars. A third trend in the history ofthe Third Reich deals not only with the politics of exclusionbut also of inclusion, as found in the concept of Volksgemeinschaft(national community), a concept that had many facets, such asthe Volksfamilie, comradeship and home front. And it was themedia that had the task of ‘translating’ this conceptto the people in many appealing ways. The fourth part considersthe gendering of memories after 1945 and the dominance of malenarratives and points of view. The four parts of the articleare intended to contribute to intersectional history and thehistory of social engineering.     

Asamjñām akarot — Cyavanas rache: Zu MBH. 3, 122, 13f

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Comparing Outsourcing Patterns in Domestic and FDI Manufacturing Plants: Empirical Evidence from Spain

To fully understand the local linkages of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) plants, we argue it would be useful to analyze the outsourcing patterns of such plants in comparison to domestic plants. Consequently, we examined 1031 industrial plants, both domestic and foreign, located in Spain. The FDI plants show patterns similar to those of domestic plants with regard to the level of outsourcing, the incidence of outsourced production on the companies’ total sales and the economic content of outsourcing relationships. Further, our results show that levels of embeddedness in the local and regional economy of FDI plants are not significantly different from domestic plants. However, FDI plants are highly concentrated spatially in the largest industrial agglomerations. For such plants, Barcelona not only seems a preferred site for location but also for contracting manufacturing tasks.     

The Spatial Patterns of Networks,Hierarchies and Subsidiaries

This article reviews evidence and arguments linking the networking behaviour of firms with geographic distance, before examining the spatial relationships of electronics firms in the three major electronics centres in Spain. The focus is on the spatial pattern and extent of different types of inter-firm relations. Based on the analysis of 184 surveyed establishments, displaying different ownership and organization characteristics, the results show that while regional linkages are important, significant extra-regional linkages are also maintained by firms in regional clusters. The spatial extent of linkages depends on the mode of relations; arm's length, network and hierarchy relations show different spatial patterns, as do different types of cooperation. The importance of extra-regional linkages also varies with firm- and plant-specific characteristics. Extra-regional linkages are more common among larger and more R&D-intensive firms, firms with greater presence in the rest of the country and firms with more experience of cooperation and more stable relationships.     

The rôle of transport in firms' spatial organization: evidence from the Spanish food processing industry

This paper explores the role of transport in the spatial organization of food processing firms in Spain. A framework is developed through the analysis of the various mechanisms by which transport affects firms, and the identification of key elements and recent trends in spatial firm organization. Empirical evidence from interviews suggests that with modern logistic strategies transport is becoming more important. In a time‐based competitive environment, transport plays an important role in efforts to reduce delivery times, and increase reliability and flexibility in deliveries, as well as customer responsiveness. Not only does transport influence firms' location decisions, but also by adjusting to transport improvements firms are found to reconfigure their spatial organization.