The attraction of inward investment from the UK and from overseas was the main focus of regional development policy in Wales for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Whilst Wales has been particularly successful in attracting foreign enterprise, the contribution of new investors to improving longer term...

This paper reports the findings of a longitudinal study into manufacturing performance, lean production principles and buyer supplier relations in the Japanese, US and UK automotive industries. A total of 26 first tier component makers in the three countries were subject to detailed benchmarking...

Government policy emphasises five ‘drivers’ of productivity: competition, enterprise, innovation, investment and skillsand each of these has been the subject of major programmes of reform (HM Treasury, 2006). Despite this, andnotwithstanding some improvement, UK productivity in terms of output...

Clusters are systems of localised economic activity and innovation. This report reviews current evidence on clustersand develops policy recommendations for the UK. It argues that clusters include multiple firms from related sectorsthat are co-located within a web of complex linkages and a...

This paper builds on Granovetter's distinction between strong and weak ties and responds to recent calls for a more dynamic, processual and thus comprehensive understanding of knowledge transfer in networks with regard to both the nature of the ties that link firms to novel sources of knowledge...