Should I Stay or Should I Go: Predicting Advanced Producer Services Firm Expansion and Contraction

The literature on firm location selection allows us to retrospectively explain why firms did locate in particular places. However, it remains challenging to prospectively predict where they will locate. In this article, we propose a simple conceptual model of firm location decisions, then operationalize it using the ordinal stochastic degree sequence model (oSDSM). We use this model to predict whether 104 advanced producer service firms will expand, contract, or maintain their presence in each of 525 cities, and find that these predictions are accurate in more than 86 percent of cases. We conclude with suggestions for further refinement of this model.

On the global city map, but not in command? Probing Manila’s position in the world city network

The changing geography of service employment and the relocation of back-office service tasks to developing economies present a challenge to contemporary world city network research and methodology, as cost-driven offshoring may wrongly suggest a city’s increased importance in global city rankings. In particular, financial service firms, but also management consultancies, law firms, and other advanced producer service firms have offshored tasks abroad. These firms’ offices are attributed a vital role in the world city network literature and form the basis for world city rankings using the interlocking network model. Based on empirical research on advanced producer service firms in Metro Manila, the Philippines, this paper argues that the existence of linkages and the appearance ‘on the map’ of dominant economic flows does not automatically lead to an increased command and control position of Manila. Instead, the attraction of lower-end services leads to Manila’s dependent articulation into global service production networks. The findings challenge the key assumptions about ‘command functions’ and ‘strategic role’ of global cities that underpin the global city rankings. The paper critiques current conceptualisations of command and control in global urban network theory in the light of changing intra-firm divisions of labour in advanced producer service firms, and stresses the importance of qualitative research.

Knowledge Hubs in the German Urban System: Identifying Hubs by Combining Network and Territorial Perspectives

This paper identifies hubs of knowledge-based labour in the German urban system from two perspectives: the importance of a metropolitan region as a place and the importance of a metropolitan region as an organisational node. This combination of a network perspective with a territorial perspective enables the identification of hubs. From the functional perspective, hubs are understood as important nodes of national and global networks, established by flows of people, goods, capital and information as well as by organisational and power relations. From the territorial perspective, hubs are understood as spatial clusters of organisations (firms, public authorities, non-governmental organisations). The functional focus of the paper lies on knowledge-based services. Based on data about employment and multi-branch advanced producer service firms, four main types of metropolitan regions are identified: growing knowledge hubs, stagnating knowledge hubs, stagnating knowledge regions and catch-up knowledge regions. The results show an affinity between knowledge-based work and bigger metropolitan regions as well as an east-west divide in the German urban system.