Technological Change, Industrial Restructuring and Regional Development

Business & Money

Amin, Ash

Economics

Unwin Hyman

Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities, and Communities

In Architectures of Knowledge, Ash Amin and Patrick Cohendet argue that the time is right for research to explore the relationship between two other dimensions of knowledge in order to explain the innovative performance of firms: between knowledge that is 'possessed' and knowledge that is 'practiced' generally within communities of like-minded employees in a firm. The impetus behind this argument is both conceptual and empirical. Conceptually, there is a need to explore the interaction of knowledge that firms possess in the form of established competencies of stored memory, with the knowing that occurs in distributed communities through the conscious and unconscious acts of social interaction. Empirically, the impetus comes from the challenge faced by firms to the hierarchically defined architecture that bring together specialized units of ((possessed)) knowledge and the distributed and always unstable architecture of knowledge that draws on the continuously changing capacity of interpretation among actors. In this book, these questions of the dynamics of innovating/learning through practices of knowing, and the management of the interface between transactional and knowledge imperatives, are approached in a cross-disciplinary and empirically grounded manner. The book is the synthesis of an innovative encounter between a socio-spatial theorist and an economist. The book results from the delicate interplay between two very different epistemologies and consequent positions, but which progressively converged towards what is hoped to be a novel vision. The book begins by explaining why knowledge is becoming more of a core element of the value- generating process in the economy, then juxtaposes the economic and cognitive theorization's of knowledge in firms with pragmatic and socially grounded theorization's and a critical exploration of the neglected dimension of the spatiality of knowledge formation in firms. The book concludes by discussing the corporate governance implications of learning based on competencies and communities, and a how national science and technology policies might respond to the idea of learning as a distributed, non-cognitive, practice-based phenomenon.

Cohendet, Patrick

Management & Leadership

Oxford University Press

In Architectures of Knowledge, Ash Amin and Patrick Cohendet argue that the time is right for research to explore the relationship between two other dimensions of knowledge in order to explain the innovative performance of firms: between knowledge that is 'possessed' and knowledge that is 'practiced' generally within communities of like-minded employees in a firm. The impetus behind this argument is both conceptual and empirical. Conceptually, there is a need to explore the interaction of knowledge that firms possess in the form of established competencies of stored memory, with the knowing that occurs in distributed communities through the conscious and unconscious acts of social interaction. Empirically, the impetus comes from the challenge faced by firms to the hierarchically defined architecture that bring together specialized units of (possessed) knowledge and the distributed and always unstable architecture of knowledge that draws on the continuously changing capacity of interpretation among actors. In this book, these questions of the dynamics of innovating/learning through practices of knowing, and the management of the interface between transactional and knowledge imperatives, are approached in a cross-disciplinary and empirically grounded manner. The book is the synthesis of an innovative encounter between a socio-spatial theorist and an economist. The book results from the delicate interplay between two very different epistemologies and consequent positions, but which progressively converged towards what is hoped to be a novel vision. The book begins by explaining why knowledge is becoming more of a core element of the value-generating process in the economy, then juxtaposes the economic and cognitive theorization's of knowledge in firms with pragmatic and socially grounded theorization's and a critical exploration of the neglected dimension of the spatiality of knowledge formation in firms. The book

In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion about the social economy and the term 'the third way' has attained a level of household recognition, especially in America and Britain. Academics and commentators have debated the usefulness of the social economy as a restraint on capitalist excesses with some arguing that the 'third way' is but a poor substitute for a welfare state. This book provides a refreshing and accessible account of real life experience in a social economy.By focusing on new evidence, this book critically analyses such themes as:*the range of academic and policy expectation that have emerged in recent years in the developed world*the policies of New Labour in Britain*the dynamics of social enterprises in Bristol, London, Middlesbrough and Glasgow.These critical assessments lead the authors to reflect in the future potential of the social economy and the possible policy changes that are necessary to maximise whatever opportunity the sector provides.

Placing the Social Economy (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Political Economy)

Hudson, Ray

Cameron, Angus

Routledge

In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion about the social economy and the term 'the third way' has attained a level of household recognition, especially in America and Britain. Academics and commentators have debated the usefulness of the social economy as a restraint on capitalist excesses with some arguing that the 'third way' is but a poor substitute for a welfare state. This book provides a refreshing and accessible account of real life experience in a social economy. By focusing on new evidence, this book critically analyses such themes as: *the range of academic and policy expectation that have emerged in recent years in the developed world *the policies of New Labour in Britain *the dynamics of social enterprises in Bristol, London, Middlesbrough and Glasgow. These critical assessments lead the authors to reflect in the future potential of the social economy and the possible policy changes that are necessary to maximise whatever opportunity the sector provides.

Cities: Reimagining the Urban

This book develops a fresh and challenging perspective on the city. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of material and texts, it argues that too much contemporary urban theory is based on nostalgia for a humane, face-to-face and bounded city. Amin and Thrift maintain that the traditional divide between the city and the rest of the world has been perforated through urban encroachment, the thickening of the links between the two, and urbanization as a way of life. 
They outline an innovative sociology of the city that scatters urban life along a series of sites and circulations, reinstating previously suppressed areas of contemporary urban life: from the presence of non-human activity to the centrality of distant connections. The implications of this viewpoint are traced through a series of chapters on power, economy and democracy. This concise and accessible book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociology, geography, urban studies, cultural studies and politics. .

Politics & Social Sciences

Thrift, Nigel

Social Sciences

Polity

Land of Strangers

The impersonality of social relationships in the society of strangers is making majorities increasingly nostalgic for a time of closer personal ties and strong community moorings. The constitutive pluralism and hybridity of modern living in the West is being rejected in an age of heightened anxiety over the future and drummed up aversion towards the stranger. Minorities, migrants and dissidents are expected to stay away, or to conform and integrate, as they come to be framed in an optic of the social as interpersonal or communitarian. Judging these developments as dangerous, this book offers a counter-argument by looking to relations that are not reducible to local or social ties in order to offer new suggestions for living in diversity and for forging a different politics of the stranger. The book explains the balance between positive and negative public feelings as the synthesis of habits of interaction in varied spaces of collective being, from the workplace and urban space, to intimate publics and tropes of imagined community. The book proposes a series of interventions that make for public being as both unconscious habit and cultivated craft of negotiating difference, radiating civilities of situated attachment and indifference towards the strangeness of others. It is in the labour of cultivating the commons in a variety of ways that Amin finds the elements for a new politics of diversity appropriate for our times, one that takes the stranger as there, unavoidable, an equal claimant on ground that is not pre-allocated.

Sociology

Seeing Like a City

Seeing like a city means recognizing that cities are living things made up of a tangle of networks, built up from the agency of countless actors. Cities must not be considered as expressions of larger paradigms or sites of human effort and organization alone. Within their density, size and sprawl can be found a world of symbols, bodies, buildings, technologies and infrastructures. It is the machine-like combination, interaction and confrontation of these different elements that make a city. Such a view locates urban outcomes and influences in the character of these networks, which together power urban life, allocating resources, shaping social opportunities, maintaining order and simply enabling life. More than the silent stage on which other powers perform, such networks represent the essence of the city. They also form an important political project, a politics of small interventions with large effects. The increasing evidence for an Anthropocene bears out the way in which humanity has stamped its footprint on the planet by constructing urban forms that act as systems for directing life in ways that create both immense power and immense constraint.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Amin, Ash. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Amin, Ash

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Amin, Ash. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Technological Change, Industrial Restructuring and Regional Development

Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities, and Communities

Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities, and Communities

Placing the Social Economy (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Political Economy)

Placing the Social Economy (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Political Economy)

Cities: Reimagining the Urban

Cities: Reimagining the Urban

Land of Strangers

Land of Strangers

Seeing Like a City