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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Al JamesORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Over the past three decades, economic geographers have explored how the spatial co-location of firms in regional industrial agglomerations helps foster learning, innovation and economic competitiveness. While recent work highlights the crucial role of labour mobility in promoting inter-firm ‘knowledge spillovers’, it pays little attention to how gendered responsibilities of care and personal-life interests beyond the workplace shape workers’ (non)participation in the relational networks and communities of practice widely theorized as enabling learning and innovation. This article presents new data from two regional economies: Dublin, Ireland, and Cambridge, UK. It documents the role of ‘work–life balance’ provision across IT employers in shaping the cross-firm mobility of workers and the tacit knowledge, skills and competencies which they embody. The article disrupts the powerful premise that ‘cross-firm labour mobility is always and everywhere good’ which informs much of the regional learning literature. It also contributes to emerging debates around ‘holistic’ regional development.
Author(s): James A
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Economic Geography
Year: 2014
Volume: 14
Issue: 3
Pages: 483-510
Print publication date: 01/05/2014
Online publication date: 06/03/2013
Acceptance date: 29/01/2013
Date deposited: 28/09/2016
ISSN (print): 1468-2702
ISSN (electronic): 1468-2710
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbt002
DOI: 10.1093/jeg/lbt002
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