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Local economy is conventionally defined through political administrative units. The continuity of this approach has been challenged as more networked forms of economy have evolved. In response, local economies are increasingly reconfigured around city-regions, on presumption of linking network potential with local dynamics. Such challenges present several problems for practitioners in local economic governance. This paper examines the continuity between city-regional articulations of local economy units (LEU) and localised dynamics. Using lower-tier localities in Staffordshire, UK, reconfigured into the Greater Birmingham & Solihull city-region, it uses a location quotient to examine industrial concentration as a determinant of related variety. It extrapolates these concentrations to define LEUs and examine their continuity with formal political designation. It argues growing dependence on the city-region is a partial representation which ignores industry-based approaches and the need for plurality in defining local economies. Adopting such approaches may be of value to local government policy practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City-regions have become a core unit of analysis for spatial economy, providing an explicit link between bounded administrative units and more networked spaces of production. Too often, however, such analysis is focused on the core of the city-region, applying presumptions of gravity-based agglomeration. This paper examines these networked spaces of production from the city-region periphery, using a firm-based approach as critical determinants of spatial economy via their key interactions. Focused on the Greater Birmingham city-region, UK, the paper explores the integration of city-regional geography with firm-based networked economy. In doing so, it applies a set of networks of practice, focused on firms' factored, transactional, and transitional dependencies. Using these networks of practice, it critically analyses the spaces of production formed through firm-based interactions, and their concomitance with city-regional designations. It makes two key contributions. First, it enhances the call for greater understanding of the relationship between core and periphery in the context of city-regions. Second, it argues that network-based approaches, which form spatial economy around firm interactions over administrative configurations, offer useful insight into understanding firm–place relationships which more conventional place-based approaches cannot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Creative Industries (CI) is a growth sector, yet understandings of CI practice remain limited. CI represent a heterodox sector with high variation levels between firms. Pressure has emerged on CI to adopt more orthodox business practices, maximising growth and contributing towards national economic objectives. Such practices however must be cognisant of a highly esoteric sector founded upon creative intensity and project-based systems. This question of business practice is explored through the Arts-based Creative Industries (ABCI). The article uses a novel SME diagnostic to explore practices, dependencies and exposures in an environment of reduced funding and pressure for commercialisation. It proposes ABCI supplement resource limitations and demands for creative intensity through networks; techniques used by ABCI could be of value more widely to SMEs in an increasingly network-based economy. Similarly, these networks risk locking firms into unrealistic dependence on external sources of knowledge and funding which exert significant influence on business development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subnational economic governance has witnessed ongoing transformation as part of what is argued as a financialization of the policy process. Within England, recent reform has seen two specific tendencies: a transformation attempting greater integration between industrial structure and subnational spaces; and more entrepreneurial practices incorporating businesses as key actors. Here, city-regional agglomeration models have been adopted to activate internal resource. This paper explores the effect of these changes on policy continuity amongst constituent parts of the city-region through the concept of goodwill. It focuses on the Greater Birmingham and Solihull region of the UK and its relationship with a constituent locality: Southern Staffordshire. It argues reform has redrawn the subnational map with greater sensitivity around industrial structure. Adapting modes of financializing the governance process, however, using city-regions' presumed benefits around competitiveness and efficiency, frame this sensitivity. A form of goodwill has thus emerged founded around compliance with orthodox city-regional interpretations, supplementing financial shortfalls yet reinforcing further space–policy separation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates have seen increased interest in the growth of SMEs. Most research however follows a limited remit, focusing on specific subsets and employing narrow, resource-based perspectives. A consequence is our knowledge is limited on how SME growth occurs more broadly and the critical determinants in this process. This paper addresses this gap, examining SME growth as a multidimensional process rather than an output. The paper operationalises a Four Dimensions Conceptual Model through a Systematic Literature Review of 36 studies on the growth process. It identifies a broader set of determinants supporting a multidimensional approach, the pluralistic nature of SME growth embedded in distinctive contexts. Evidence suggests a greater reliance on firm-based Characteristics and Environmental factors in supporting growth, providing critical inputs into forming and reinforcing networks through which firm-based resources are activated. We emphasise the need to test these propositions through more SME research using qualitative and longitudinal methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SMEs make a major contribution to the economy of cities and places. The relationship between firms and place is increasingly explained through the application of city-based externality models. Such explanations have limited validity in a number of contexts. One of these is in the economies of small- and medium-sized towns and communities (SMST). Whilst convention has sought to apply core-periphery explanations to the functioning of firms within SMSTs, the economies of SMSTs and entrepreneurial processes of SME embedding, adaptation and survival in such places are more complex. This paper explores these entrepreneurial processes in the context of manufacturing firms in five SMSTs in the West Midlands, UK. The paper uses interview data to understand the relationships between SMEs and place through the development of successive and evolving linked enterprise structures. Through these linked enterprise structures, SMEs engage in a process of adaptive embeddedness, resulting in new resource configurations through fluid iterations of structural, emotional, and circumstantial embeddedness. This paper is the first to identify and explore these different forms of embeddedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of the regionalist era and introduction of localism has set a number of emerging issues for economic development at the local level. Amongst the spatial, organisational and functional challenges facing local government a prevalent one is re-engineering a local development trajectory to represent this new environment. The dissolution of the regional governance hierarchy alongside a fundamental shift in aspirations for economic shape and structure has forced localities to reconsider approaches to both economic development and spatial economy. Using an action-based case study of the Borough of Poole, a coastal conurbation in Southern England, this article looks at the local response in revising the economic development strategy through a contextual benchmarking approach. It proposes an alternative method to adopt in developing local strategy contributing toward questions on defining spatial economy, integrating local context and actors, and adapting to a wider set of structural and fiscal issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]