The Digital Economy: Business Organization, Production Processes and Regional Developments

by Edward J. Malecki; Department

• ISBN13: 9780415396967
• ISBN10: 0415396964
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2008-01-29
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The book provides an up-to-date account of the technologies, organizations, and dynamics which constitute the digital economy, and assesses the impacts they have on regions and communities.

Author Biography

Edward J. Malecki is Professor of Geography at The Ohio State University. He is author of over 100 published papers, and of Technology and Economic Development (1997) and Associate Editor of Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. Bruno Moriset is Associate Professor and Research Director in the department of Geography and Planning at the University of Lyon - Jean Moulin in France. His research focuses notably on the link between information technologies and regional development.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. vii
List of tables	p. viii
List of boxes	p. x
Abbreviations	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xvi
Introduction: The digital economy and the splintering of economic space	p. 1
Splintered, yet connected	p. 1
Structure of the book	p. 8
Information technologies and the ônew economyö debate	p. 13
The economy of digitized information	p. 13
The new economy debate and the productivity paradox	p. 17
The latest wave: IT and the Fifth Kondratieff	p. 25
A knowledge economy: more than IT	p. 28
Conclusions	p. 34
Where local meets global: the rise of the digital network	p. 36
Emergency of a worldwide, integrated network	p. 39
The economic geography of long distance, broadband infrastructures	p. 44
Local broadband: the enabler of the digital economy	p. 55
Conclusion: does broadband matter?	p. 61
Digital production and business organizations	p. 63
Mastering complexity with information technology	p. 63
Network-centric firms or virtual enterprises?	p. 73
Global networks of modular production and the supply chain issue	p. 80
Conclusion	p. 91
The multiscale geographies of electronic commerce and electronic finance	p. 93
E-commerce: concepts and definitions	p. 93
Business-to-business (BtoB) e-commerce	p. 96
The mediocre success of e-retail	p. 101
Electronic finance: globality vs place-embeddedness	p. 112
Conclusion	p. 118
Splintering the economic space: the offshoring of corporate services	p. 119
Offshoring strategy: benefits, risks, organization	p. 120
The breadth and diversity of a new global industry	p. 128
Offshoring measurement and consequences: a controversial subject	p. 132
The geography of service offshoring	p. 136
A focus on India	p. 142
Conclusion: will IT services and ITES go back to home countries?	p. 147
Telework/telecommuting: time and space flexibilities in work and business organization	p. 150
A ômultifacetedö concept which confounds analysis	p. 151
The pros and cons of telework	p. 156
Telework in practice	p. 160
The energy and urban issues of telework	p. 167
Conclusion	p. 172
The paradox of a ôdouble-edged geographyö: local ecosystems of the digital economy	p. 174
Space and scales in a digital economy: ôshaking handsö vs electronic transactions	p. 175
The worldwide evolution of the Silicon Valley model	p. 180
The emergence of new ecosystems of digital industries	p. 189
Conclusions	p. 197
Peripheral regions and the ôdigital divideö	p. 199
The digital economy challenge for rural and industrial communities	p. 200
IT-enabled rural service firms, or ôlone eagles and high fliersö	p. 204
The digital divide in developing countries	p. 208
Conclusion	p. 216
Epilogue: the distortion of economic space in a ôpostmodernö era	p. 218
Notes	p. 223
Bibliography	p. 225
Index	p. 259
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.