This paper examines the resilience of Irish regions during the course of the post-2007 economic crisis, focusing specifically on employment change in firms in receipt of assistance from the Irish government's enterprise development agencies. The paper classifies both regions and sectors in terms of their employment performance both before and during the recession and employs a number of techniques to assess the roles of sectoral composition, firm nationality and other factors in shaping the recession's regional impact. While nationality mix is significant, sectoral composition is seen as having a more important impact on regional employment performance. Other factors also have an important role in some regions, but their precise nature remains unknown.

This paper examines the importance of industrial clusters, and the relevance of Porter

The pharmaceutical industry was one of the strongest performing sectors of the Celtic Tiger era. During the past two decades, employment growth in the sector has been strong and continuous, even when, in recent years, employment in other manufacturing sectors has been contracting. Although positive in itself, from a dynamic regional development perspective it is important to explore the qualitative changes in the types of activities that are conducted in Ireland. Adopting a global production network approach, the paper examines Ireland's changing role in global production networks within the pharmaceutical industry, focusing on the different components of manufacturing and research and development (R&D). The analysis shows that Ireland's involvement in manufacturing has shifted in the direction of relatively higher value generating activities. Within R&D, although the level of value creation has increased substantially, Ireland's involvement nonetheless remains concentrated in the (relatively) lower value generating activities of the global R&D network. In addition, the sector remains strongly dominated by foreign companies so that a large share of the created value is not captured within Ireland

SOKOL M., VAN EGERAAT C. and WILLIAMS B. Revisiting the 'informational city': space of flows, polycentricity and the geography of knowledge-intensive business services in the emerging global city-region of Dublin, Regional Studies. The paper engages with the notion that the new spatial logic, underpinned by information and communication technology (ICT) and the 'space of flows', manifests itself in the form of 'informational cities' described as multinuclear spatial structures or polycentric city-regions in the knowledge-based economy. Focusing on the geography of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), the paper argues that there is little evidence of such polycentric pattern emerging within the Greater Dublin Region, Ireland. The exploration of factors underpinning weak decentralization tendencies of KIBS opens for reconsideration the concept of the 'informational city'. Knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS)Polycentricity City-region Dublin SOKOL M., VAN EGERAAT C. et WILLIAMS B. Revisiter la cité de l'information: espace de flux, polycentricité et géographie des secteurs à haute densité intellectuelle aux entreprises basés sur la connaissance dans la nouvelle ville-région de Dublin, Regional Studies. Cet article s'intéresse au fait que la nouvelle logique spatiale, sous-tendue par les technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) et les espaces de flux se manifeste sous la forme de cités de l'information décrites comme des structures spatiales à noyaux multiples ou de villes-régions polycentriques dans l'économie de la connaissance. S'appuyant essentiellement sur la géographie des secteurs à haute densité intellectuelle (KIBS), les auteurs font valoir qu'il y a peu de preuves de l'émergence de tels modèles polycentriques au sein du grand Dublin. L'analyse de facteurs confirmant de faibles tendances à la décentralisation des KIBS invite à reconsidérer le concept de cité de l'information.

Abstract:The economic crisis of the mid-1970s marked the transition from the traditional Fordist mode of industrial organization to one of time-based competition (TBC). It has been postulated that the rise of TBC will lead to an increase in local and regional production linkages. Part of the argument is that the associated search for logistical efficiency and the adoption of the just-in-time (JIT) principles will lead to closer buyer-supplier proximity. In this article, we test the relevance of this idea in a case study of the microcomputer hardware industry in Ireland and Scotland. Most of the data were collected during multiple interviews with subsidiaries of all global microcomputer assemblers with operations in one of the two countries. The study shows that rather than sourcing locally or regionally, the assemblers import the vast majority of their material inputs from regions outside Ireland and Britain, notably from the Far East, and that the inbound logistics pipelines of most components involve inventories, often hubbed in local warehouses. Such supply systems have been interpreted as pseudo-JIT, suboptimal inbound logistics systems that are organized on traditional Fordist principles. We argue that the logistics systems and the geography of the supply linkages should not be interpreted this way. Inbound inventories were tightly managed, leading to modest target buffer levels and high shipment frequencies. Even under JIT supply, the geographic configuration of production linkages and the details of logistics systems remain highly dependent on a range of contextual conditions and component characteristics. The findings of this study suggest that a strategy of building integrated vertical production clusters around subsidiaries of multinational enterprises is no longer suitable for Ireland and Scotland, at least not in the context of the microcomputer industry.