The Changing Economic Geography of Companies and Regions in Times of Risk, Uncertainty and Crisis

This book offers conceptual and empirical insights from economic geography to explore how uncertainties, crises, and risks, shape, reshape, and ultimately transform the spatial arrangements of companies and regions.

This book provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of economic interactions amidst contemporary challenges. It explores concepts such as global value chains, global production networks, regional resilience, and the impact of crises, risks, and uncertainties on spatial economic patterns. Case studies from various regions, nations, and industries, including lesser researched sectors such as medical technology and the restaurant and bar industry offer tangible and real-world manifestations of these dynamics. Through its comprehensive coverage and interdisciplinary approach, this book equips readers with practical knowledge applicable to academia and real-world contexts. It offers a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between economic geography and contemporary challenges at a variety of levels.

The book provides valuable perspectives for academics, practitioners, and policy makers in the fields of Economic Geography, Regional Studies, Political Sciences, Economic Sociology, Economics, and International Business Studies.

Thomas Neise is an Interim Professor of Economic and Social Geography at the Heidelberg University in Germany. His research focuses on the adaptation and resilience strategies of companies to extreme weather events, climate change, and crises. Another research interest lies on risks in global production networks. He also studies the role of foreign direct investment for regional development in Southeast Asia.

Philip Verfürth is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Geography, Osnabrück University. He has been a visiting scholar at Ankara University and the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space in Erkner, Germany. His research interests include the spatial dynamics of globalization, with a focus on global production networks, the geographies of digital transformation, and the intersection of firm resilience and regional development.

Martin Franz holds the Chair for Human Geography with an emphasis on Economic Geography at Osnabrück University. After studying geography in Bochum, Martin Franz worked at the Center for Interdisciplinary Ruhr Research (ZEFIR) in Bochum and the Departments of Geography at the Philipps-University of Marburg and the University of Bayreuth.