In this article, we critically analyse the September 2015 decision of the UK retailer Tesco to sell its highly profitable South Korean subsidiary Homeplus to private investors. For over a decade since market entry in 1999, Homeplus had grown steadily to achieve a market-leading position through a process of strategic localization in which Tesco's global business practices were selectively adapted to meet the specific needs of the South Korean market. Against this backdrop, we explain the exit decision through theorising the dynamic intersection of home and host market factors that developed contemporaneously from 2010 onwards. On the one hand, worsening market conditions and financial pressures in a post-crisis UK domestic market drove Tesco to refocus on its home operations and, ultimately, identify saleable assets to offset mounting debts. On the other hand, steadily growing resistance within the South Korean market from competitors, regulators, labour and consumers caused sales growth to stall and then start to decline. Our analysis contributes to the economic geography literature on retail divestment by conceptualising the relational process of divestment decision-making that encompasses the intersection of home and host market pressures as well as conditions across the wider portfolio of subsidiaries. The research is particularly distinctive in its profiling of this coevolution of drivers, and in distilling the different ‘domains’ of host market contestation. The analysis also has wider significance in the context of the broader literatures on economic globalization that have tended to focus heavily on processes of expansion and market entry and far less on the instances of failure and exit that are an integral and inevitable part of these wider dynamics.

Coercive commodities and the political economy of involuntary consumption: The case of the gambling industries

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Vol. 49 , 12 : pp. 2762 -2779. Published December , 2017

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Coercive commodities are those goods and services that promote ‘akratic’ consumption – that consumption recognised by consumers themselves to be contrary to their own best interests, all things considered. The production of coercive commodities has become an increasingly significant economic project of fractions of the capitalist class. As a form of secondary exploitation, coercive commodities facilitate the extraction of surplus profits from the savings and assets of the working classes, thus impeding the accumulation of a workers’ hoard that may act as a potential blockage to value realisation in consumption. We use the example of commercial gambling to illustrate the political economy of coercive commodity production. The gambling production system is driven by a core dynamic between spatially fixed capital, the pressures of competition, and the technological generation of akrasia. The geographical expression of this dynamic is determined by the contingencies of the ‘harm maximisation’ policies of the state and the political efforts of individual capitalists to gain and reproduce monopoly power. Gambling production is effective as a form of secondary exploitation because, in addition to the profits accrued by exploiting labour, it extracts surplus profits by diverging sale price from value, by harnessing monopoly power, and by increasing the volume of consumption through akrasia. It is this extractive power, amplified by the consumer credit system, that forms the basis of the systemic utility of coercive commodities in late capitalist economies.

From compliance to co-production: Emergent forms of agency in Sustainable Wine Production in New Zealand

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Vol. 49 , 12 : pp. 2780 -2799. Published December , 2017

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This article engages with non-human agency through the interrogation of the emerging role of metrics in the governance of sustainability in the New Zealand primary sector. In it, we argue that the agency of the metrics builds on previous work that has elaborated the impact of audited best practice on the subjectivities of producers and processors, including the recent examination of the active influence of metrics that engenders unexpected and uncontrolled change in social networks of production. In this case, the analysis of the influence of metrics shifts to those used within a recently introduced ‘learning’ tool (Wine Industry Sustainability Engine) that can be classified as an effort in transition management. The capacity of metrics as agents is already apparent in the perceived interactions and engagements with the Wine Industry Sustainability Engine tool as expressed by likely users during assessments of the usability of initial pilot software. Using their response, we demonstrate that, despite intentions to use the tool to foster particular sets of practices and ethics through benchmarking, the metrics have multiple roles in production worlds—compelling compliance to regulations, creating new ways to communicate complex relations and practices, and generating information for reflexive self-evaluation. Through these roles, we argue, metrics clearly operate as both a material and ontological non-human actor, expressed in different ways in different assemblages. This conclusion has implications for the application of transition management more broadly, and helps us to better understand what we want metrics to accomplish, what they can accomplish, and the possible gap between the two.

Urban service provision: Insights from pragmatism and ethics

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Vol. 49 , 12 : pp. 2800 -2812. Published December , 2017

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Making science suburban: The suburbanization of industrial research and the invention of “research man”

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Vol. 49 , 12 : pp. 2813 -2834. Published December , 2017

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The missing politics of urban vulnerability: The state and the co-production of climate risk

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Vol. 49 , 12 : pp. 2835 -2852. Published December , 2017

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Theme issue: Global Cities Research and Urban Theory Making; Guest editors: Michael Hoyler
John Harrison
Introduction

Global cities research and urban theory making

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Vol. 49 , 12 : pp. 2853 -2858. Published December , 2017

Theme issue: Global Cities Research and Urban Theory Making; Guest editors: Michael Hoyler
John Harrison
Theme issue articles

Well connected compared to what? Rethinking frames of reference in world city network research

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Vol. 49 , 12 : pp. 2859 -2877. Published December , 2017

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Claims about the strength of cities’ global connections have become commonplace in the world cities literature. Although such claims are inherently comparative, authors often do not specify the reference. London is well connected compared to what? In this paper, I adapt the stochastic degree sequence model from network analysis as a tool to derive a frame of reference that can be used to inform and substantiate such claims. Beyond providing a formal statistical method for deciding when the claim that “X is well connected” is justified, it also addresses a number of other challenges in this literature, including more explicitly casting firms as key agents in world city formation, providing insight into when and where global firms might be expected to locate their branch offices, and helping identify cases that warrant more detailed investigation. To illustrate, I apply the method to data on cities and firms from 2013, examining the results at five different scales, from the individual city and firm to the entire world city network. I conclude by considering how this approach allows researchers to ask different kinds of questions about the nature of world city status.

Manning circuits of value: Lebanese professionals and expatriate world-city formation in Beirut

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Vol. 49 , 12 : pp. 2878 -2896. Published December , 2017

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Advanced producer services firms and the highly skilled labour they employ are important indicators for world-city formation, as their activities allegedly grant cities the capabilities to exert command and control over global accumulation processes. To ‘stress test’ this central assumption of global city theory, we apply Burawoy’s extended case method to probe world-city formation in Beirut, Lebanon. Observing a tendency in the literature to superimpose distinctions between high- and low-skilled labour and between North and South, the study marshals a more plural conceptualization of ‘professionals’ to include expatriate or transnational Lebanese service workers. The study’s key finding is that Euro-American professionals play a relatively marginal role in Beirut’s human resource base, complicating North–South distinctions. By contrast, domestic and expat Beiruti professionals are far more crucial in manning circuits of value leading to and from the city. These professionals act as intermediaries in unlocking Gulf markets for clients, contribute to institutional change in their host countries and help build command and control functions elsewhere. Relatedly, Beirut has become susceptible to processes of ‘expatriate world-city formation’, where real estate development and the attraction of bank deposits are partly the result of these APS-professionals repatriating their management fees into Beirut’s built environment and Lebanon’s domestic banking sector. Witnessing the growth of Beirut's expatriate world-city functions in absence of financial centre redevelopment, the paper proposes to be sensitive to potential disconnects between the function and location of command and control in global cities more generally.

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

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Vol. 49 , 12 : pp. 2897 -2915. Published December , 2017

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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.

Extending beyond ‘world cities’ in World City Network (WCN) research: Urban positionality and economic linkages through the Australia-based corporate network

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Vol. 49 , 12 : pp. 2916 -2937. Published December , 2017

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Defining the role of cities within economic networks has been a key theoretical challenge, particularly as nuanced understandings of positionality are increasingly championed over hierarchical notions of influence or power in the World City Network (WCN). This paper applies social network analysis (SNA) to identify the critical role that a wide range of cities plays in the Australian economic system. Drawing upon the set of Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed firms, four distinct sub-networks are compared against the overall urban network. Each of the materials, energy, industrials, and financials sector sub-networks are found to have unique configurations of inter-urban relations, which are articulated through institutional and industry-specific factors, grounded in diverse histories and path-dependent trajectories. This analysis applies five different centrality measures to understand how positionality within the overall network and respective sub-networks might better inform policymakers formulating ‘globalizing’ urban policy. This addresses the long-standing theoretical debate regarding territorially articulated hierarchies of urban/corporate power, extricating WCN research from the core-periphery assumptions tied to its world-systems theory lineage. Understanding how, rather than if, cities are global provides contextual knowledge about how cities are situated within broader circuits of production, and the exogenous relations that shape urban economies around the world, providing a framework for research in other global contexts.

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Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

Table of Contents:

Featured graphics

Circular visualization of virtual-land flows along with international cereal trade

Quantifying and visualizing language diversity of Hong Kong using Twitter

Abstract

Regular articles

You are where you go, the commodification of daily life through ‘location’

Abstract

Producer firms, technology diffusion and spillovers to local suppliers: Examining the effects of Foreign Direct Investment and the technology gap

Abstract

Conceptualising contemporary retail divestment: Tesco's departure from South Korea

Abstract

Coercive commodities and the political economy of involuntary consumption: The case of the gambling industries

Abstract

From compliance to co-production: Emergent forms of agency in Sustainable Wine Production in New Zealand

Abstract

Urban service provision: Insights from pragmatism and ethics

Abstract

Making science suburban: The suburbanization of industrial research and the invention of “research man”

Abstract

The missing politics of urban vulnerability: The state and the co-production of climate risk

Abstract

Theme issue: Global Cities Research and Urban Theory Making; Guest editors: Michael Hoyler
John Harrison
Introduction

Global cities research and urban theory making

Theme issue: Global Cities Research and Urban Theory Making; Guest editors: Michael Hoyler
John Harrison
Theme issue articles

Well connected compared to what? Rethinking frames of reference in world city network research

Abstract

Manning circuits of value: Lebanese professionals and expatriate world-city formation in Beirut

Abstract

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

Abstract

Extending beyond ‘world cities’ in World City Network (WCN) research: Urban positionality and economic linkages through the Australia-based corporate network

Abstract

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Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

Table of Contents:

Featured graphics

Abstract

Regular articles

Abstract

Abstract

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Abstract

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Abstract

Abstract

Theme issue: Global Cities Research and Urban Theory Making; Guest editors: Michael Hoyler John Harrison Introduction

Theme issue: Global Cities Research and Urban Theory Making; Guest editors: Michael Hoyler John Harrison Theme issue articles

Abstract

Abstract

Abstract

Abstract

Contents

Theme issue: Global Cities Research and Urban Theory Making; Guest editors: Michael Hoyler
John Harrison
Introduction

Theme issue: Global Cities Research and Urban Theory Making; Guest editors: Michael Hoyler
John Harrison
Theme issue articles