Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
9.
Conclusions: review of the
arguments and implications for
future research
In this topic we have argued that understanding economic geography
is increasingly important for understanding multinational enterprises
(MNEs), and in turn MNEs are nowadays playing a critical role in
shaping economic geography at various spatial levels, from the local to
the global. In particular, our aim has been to demonstrate that, although
these relationships between geography and firms are in principle valid
for any kind of business or firm, they are
particularly
valid in the case
of MNEs, and also more than ever are
particularly
important now for
MNEs. Moreover, this topic has argued that the pivot on which all of
these relationship turn is the creation, diffusion and management of new
knowledge and technology. Each of the chapters of the topic, and also
the sequencing of the topics discussed in these chapters, are designed to
elaborate these arguments, bringing the reader right up to date with the
latest debates.
The topic began by arguing that multinational activities and multina-
tional expansions were the key dominant characteristic of the modern
era of globalization. Chapter 1 presented a variety of evidence to demon-
strate that understanding the investment and decision-making behaviour
of modern multinationals is key to understanding the modern global
economy. More specifically, our contention in this topic is that the eco-
nomic geography of globalization is much less well understood than ought
to be the case, given the scale of the transformations we are currently wit-
nessing, and much of the blame for this is attributable to the fact that the
locational behaviour of multinational firms has traditionally been heavily
under-researched. The reasons for this are variously related to academic
fashions, perceived political-economy realities, and issues of data avail-
ability. Yet, our reason for writing this topic is to demonstrate that actu-
ally we know far more than we typically realize about these matters, but
that previously this has not been understood. This is because the various
analytical and empirical jigsaw pieces which need to be assembled in order
to present a clearer image of the relationships between multinationals and
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