Peter Meusburger

Johannes Glückler

Martina Meskioui

The broad spectrum of topics surrounding what is termed the ‘knowledge economy’ has attracted increasing attention from the scientific community in recent years. The nature of knowledge-intensive industries, the spatiality of knowledge, the role of proximity and distance in generating functional knowledge, the transfer of knowledge via networks, and the complex interplay between knowledge, location and economic development are all live academic issues. This book, the fifth volume in Springer’s Knowledge and Space series, focuses on the last of these: the multiple relationships between knowledge, the economy, and space. It reflects the conceptual and methodological multidisciplinarity emerging from this scholarship, yet where there has up to now been a notable lack of communication between some of the contributing disciplines, resulting in lexical and other confusions, this volume brings concord and to foster interdisciplinarity. These complications have been especially evident in our understanding of the spatiality of knowledge, the part that spatial contexts play in knowledge creation and diffusion, and the relevance of face-to-face contacts, all of which are addressed in these pages. The material here is grouped into four sections—knowledge creation and economy, knowledge and economic development, knowledge and networks, and knowledge and clusters. It assembles new concepts and original empirical research from geography, economics, sociology, international business relations, and management. The book addresses a varied audience interested in the historical and spatial foundations of the knowledge economy and is intended to bridge some of the gaps between the differing approaches to research on knowledge, the economy, and space.

Knowledge and the Economy

Gary Herrigel

Michael Handke

This open access book focuses on theoretical and empirical intersections between governance, knowledge and space from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributions elucidate how knowledge is a prerequisite as well as a driver of governance efficacy, and conversely, how governance affects the creation and use of knowledge and innovation in geographical context. Scholars from the fields of anthropology, economics, geography, public administration, political science, sociology, and organization studies provide original theoretical discussions along these interdependencies. Moreover, a variety of empirical chapters on governance issues, ranging from regional and national to global scales and covering case studies in Australia, Europe, Latina America, North America and South Africa demonstrate that geography and space are not only important contexts for governance that affect the contingent outcomes of governance blueprints. Governance also creates spaces. It affects the geographical confines as well as the quality of opportunities and constraints that actors enjoy to establish legitimate and sustainable ways of social and environmental co-existence.

Knowledge for Governance

Roy Suddaby

Regina Lenz

This open access book bridges the disciplinary boundaries within the social sciences to explore the role of social institutions in shaping geographical contexts, and in creating new knowledge. It includes theorizations as well as original empirical case studies on the emergence, maintenance and change of institutions as well as on their constraining and enabling effects on innovation, entrepreneurship, art and cultural heritage, often at regional scales across Europe and North America. Rooted in the disciplines of management and organization studies, sociology, geography, political science, and economics the contributors all take comprehensive approaches to carve out the specific contextuality of institutions as well as their impact on societal outcomes. Not only does this book offer detailed insights into current debates in institutional theory, it also provides background for scholars, students, and professionals at the intersection between regional development, policy-making, and regulation.

Knowledge and Institutions

Emmanuel Lazega

Ingmar Hammer

This book discusses a core question in many fields of the social sciences, namely how to create, share and adopt new knowledge. It creates an original space for conversation between two lines of research that have developed largely in parallel for a long time: social network theory and the geography of knowledge. This book considers that relational thinking has become increasingly important for scholars to capture societal outcomes by studying social relations and networks, whereas the role of place, space and spatial scales has been somewhat neglected outside an emergent geography of knowledge. The individual contributions help integrate network arguments of connectivity, geographical arguments of contiguity and contextuality into a more comprehensive understanding of the ways in which people and organizations are constrained by and make use of space and networks for learning and innovation. Experts in the fields of geography, sociology, economics, political science, psychology, management and organizational studies develop conceptual models and propose empirical research that illustrates the ways in which networks and geography play together in processes of innovation, learning, leadership, and power. This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

Johannes Glückler

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