Urban concentration and labour market linkages in the Norwegian ICT services sector

Building on research that emphasizes the dependence of services firms on the networks and experiences of individual employees, this paper investigates the urban concentration of information and communication technology services employment in Norway from the perspective of labour market linkages. It finds that urban regions generally provide firms with access to sector-specific expertise. Beyond this, intrinsic region characteristics determine the position of individual firms in national labour markets for expertise: Firms in the dominant university town have strong contact points to academic labour markets, whereas firms in the industrial stronghold of the Western Capital region exploit a broader range of recruitment channels than firms in any of the other urban and non-urban locations. The results illustrate how capability building through recruitment is influenced by local conditions, and imply that the industry will continue to concentrate in the large-city regions where surrounding organizations provide firms with priveliged access to expertise. Implications for research, innovation policy and societal development more generally are drawn.     

Ideas and narrative in Otto of Freising's Gesta Frederici

This article discusses the inner coherence of Otto of Freising's Gesta Frederici and, by implication, the wider question of the ‘mode of perception’ in medieval historiography. Is there any connection between the philosophical and theological reflections expressed in digressions and explicit statements, and the apparently scattered and disconnected entries in his narrative? The answer to this question is positive. Gesta Frederici is carefully composed around a number of key episodes, connected to one another on the allegorical and typological level, which bring out Otto's central message about Frederick restoring the right order of the world. Book I describes the crisis in Church and Empire while Book II shows how Frederick heals this crisis by bringing peace in the Empire, governing in close cooperation with the princes, and uniting pope and emperor in close friendship for the benefit of the Church.     

Beyond ‘related variety’: how inflows of skills shape innovativeness in different industries

ABSTRACT

Building on recent evolutionary thinking, this paper focuses on inter-industry differences in the receptiveness of firms to inflows of skills from different domains of the external economy. The empirical analysis of innovation performance finds that firms’ dependences on recruiting outside their own industry domains were inversely related to the vibrancy of knowledge dynamics within them. Moreover, inflow distances that are ‘optimal’ from the perspective of learning are closer to manufacturing firms’ own industry domains, than they are to the domains of services firms. As a result, only low-tech manufacturing and technology-intensive services firms exhibit the receptiveness to inflows from ‘related’ industries found in prior evolutionary research. Firms in high-tech manufacturing, by contrast, capture strong learning benefits from intra-sectoral mobility flows, whereas firms in traditional professional services depend on skills developed outside their own industry domains. Implications for the theory, empirics and policy relevance of evolutionary economic geography are discussed.     

Globalization,Modes of Innovation and Regional Knowledge Diffusion Infrastructures

Firms increasingly transcend the boundaries of regional innovation systems in their search for technology and complementary capabilities, and only rarely can they build their knowledge bases on science system output alone. Whereas the former decouple firms from regional user–producer networks, the latter raises important questions concerning the role of local science and education system actors in industrial development. By applying the “modes of innovation” concept on a Norwegian region, this paper discusses how science and education institutions can respond to the challenges of knowledge base complexity and globalization. It concludes that such institutions may play a vital role in supporting knowledge-based development, albeit different from that of academic knowledge exploration followed by linear technology transfer to industry.     

‘Humanitarianized’ Development? Anti‐trafficking Reconfigured

Over the past three decades humanitarianism has broadened considerably in scope. Humanitarian aid agencies have increasingly moved beyond a traditionally narrow concern with immediate relief aid to engage the wider implications of their work. Humanitarian arguments have also become central to policy legitimation in a range of contexts outside the humanitarian aid sector. By contrast, this article, based on research into anti‐trafficking programmes in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia, considers a case where a particular humanitarian discourse has in fact narrowed. Anti‐trafficking, once informed by development discourses of poverty reduction and long‐term well‐being of populations, has become increasingly shaped by a humanitarian emergency logic of exceptionalism. Long‐term development modalities have contracted into a zeal for the immediateness of ‘rescues’ and saving lives. By drawing attention to how development and humanitarian discourses intersect in anti‐trafficking interventions, this article explores how such shifts in legitimization and mobilization have taken place, in turn transforming actors and practices. The article will suggest that it is the different temporal registers of the two discourses — development and humanitarianism — that help account for this shift from the former to the latter.     

AIMS AND MEANS IN THE INTER‐NORDIC CONFLICTS 1302–1319

The paper deals with the conflicts from 1302–1319 between King Birger of Sweden and his two younger brothers, the Dukes Erik and Valdemar, which also involved the kings of the two other Nordic countries, King Erik Menved of Denmark on the side of his brother‐in‐law, King Birger, and King Håkon V of Norway, mostly in alliance with the Swedish dukes. It attempts to trace the main aims of the participants, which turn out to be consistent as well as relatively realistic and in which dynastic interests had priority over national and territorial ones. In addition to the struggle over the division of Sweden, the most important issue was who was to marry Håkon V's daughter Ingebjørg who was likely to inherit the kingdom of Norway. Erik Menved's success in gaining this prize for his nephew makes him the main winner and Håkon V the main loser in the peace of Hälsingborg in 1310, whereas this situation changed in Håkon's and Duke Erik's favour when Erik married Ingebjørg in 1312 and Erik Menved had to accept the marriage the year after. Most probably, this success for the dukes led to their fall in 1317–1318, which in turn united the Swedish aristocracy behind Duke Erik's son Magnus who in 1319 became king of both Norway and Sweden, thus fulfilling all Håkon V's wishes for the future of his dynasty. Against this background, the article discusses contemporary political culture, the relationship between military and diplomatic means, the importance of dynasties and marriage alliances and the relationship between monarchy and aristocracy.