Industry 4.0 developing on the basis of digitalisation is gradually transforming production, the conditions of competition and relationships in global industry, affecting its interpretation and ...expanding its limits. This paper attempts to explore changing economic geographical context with the revaluation of comparative and competitive advantages in a semi-peripheral area of the EU. Based on company interviews, the effects of the new technologies of Industry 4.0 on the dual Hungarian manufacturing industry and its spatial structure are studied, and that whether they contribute to the reduction of duality and geographical polarization. In Eastern Hungary – just like in most areas in East-Central Europe – internationally competitive manufacturing companies emerged almost exclusively as a result of foreign direct investment, while domestic companies are forced into secondary or dependent roles. The empirical research has revealed significant differences in the progress of companies in Industry 4.0. Hungarian-owned companies evolve in a specific way from several aspects and face many difficulties. In contrast, enterprises with foreign interest continue to be the engine of development, driven from the “outside”. Duality is also reflected in the corporate structure, in space and in the realisation of Industry 4.0.
Purpose. The paper aims to examine the impact of the oblast center on regional socio-economic development in the context of the center-periphery relationship.
Methodology / approach. The general ...scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, generalization, systematization, graphic method) and special ones (statistical analysis, comparison, organizational and managerial modeling) were the basis of the methodological approach. The author improved the scientific-methodological approach to the comprehensive evaluation of a region’s socio-economic development in terms of the center-periphery relationships based on interrelated stages and methods. It stipulates the research of the impact each district of a region has on the major socio-economic parameters of an oblast; calculation of the District Socio-Economic Development Index and its comparison with the district’s distance to the oblast center; evaluation of interdependencies between the districts’ shares in major socio-economic parameters of respective oblasts and their distance to the oblast center; and analysis of the development intensity of the oblast districts depending on their distance to the oblast center.
Results. Testing the scientific-methodological approach on the example of three oblasts of Ukraine (Lvivska, Poltavska, and Chernihivska), which are developing in different spatial-geographic, socio-economic, and demographic conditions, has contributed to substantiating the features of generation and development of the center-periphery relationships in the regions with different initial development conditions; outlining the areas of socio-economic centers’ impact on the districts; detecting the intensity of positive stimulus generation and their absorption in the region considering the role of local “growth poles” in the process.
Originality / scientific novelty. The paper further develops the theoretical-methodological foundations of researching the center-periphery relationships in a region at the oblast center – oblast area level. The results of calculations following the author’s methodological approach have allowed developing the space structure for Ukrainian regions under research in the context of the center-periphery relationships.
Practical value / implications. The conducted research based on the methodology developed by the author is quite important both in terms of the scientific-methodological aspect and in the context of addressing the important regional development tasks and searching for balanced and coherent spatial development.
This study aims to contribute to the knowledge about international student mobility to semi-peripheral states. The theoretical framework combines the world- systems analysis and the push-pull model ...grounded on international migration theories. Data emanate from the semi-structured interviews with 50 international students from five leading Ukrainian universities with distinct disciplinary profiles: technical, classical, medical, aviation and life sciences. Findings reveal that the main push factors that trigger international students to study in Ukraine include a lack of job prospects and the failure to enter higher education in the home country. Attractive elements of Ukrainian universities include a lax admission process, good affordability of higher education, low cost of living and the recognition of Ukrainian degrees for further studies in developed countries. The expected quality of education appears not to be a major issue. Ukrainian degree is an indirect route for international students to enter the labour market in the home country or a gateway to further studies in developed countries.
Sport is one of the most important phenomena in Portuguese contemporary life. Yet, in the late twentieth century, there were more historical studies about antique clocks and potatoes than on sport. ...Portuguese historians ended up successively underrating its place in history, placing sport in a kind of scientific (semi)periphery, with political history becoming the core of the matter. Sport, however, is an extremely important element in any serious attempt to reconstruct contemporary history, popular culture and what it means to be Portuguese. This paper analyses the history of the Portuguese historical writing and academic research on sport history, also its emergence, development, and contemporary position in the historiography of a (semi)peripheral country, in a comparative way with the Centre. The concept of (semi)periphery is employ to describe both the situation of sport history in Portugal and the Portuguese (sport) historiography in the international context.
The article generalizes the features of modern transition from industrial to post-industrial (or knowledge-based) economy within the modernization paradigm for the states in the core and ...semi-periphery of the global economic system. It is proved that among the historical diversity of national modernization phenomena one can single out two alternative models: an innovative model and a catching-up one. It is substantiated that the innovative model is most typical for the countries forming the core of the world economic system, while the catching-up model is more typical for countries in the periphery of global development. It is revealed that modern intellectual production covers, first of all, economic sectors producing information and knowledge. At the same time, intellectual capital also functions in productive industries, influencing their indicators as well. That is why knowledge workers, who form the intellectual strata of society, are considered to be subjects of intangible intellectual production, the latter making up the core of knowledge economy. Their main function is to produce intellectual products (socially valuable knowledge), in contrast to groups, whose social function is to embody these values and knowledge. It should also be noted that concrete historical forms of knowledge objectivisation, ways of their reproduction and, accordingly, historical types of intellectual layers can differ considerably. It is concluded that knowledge-based economy is considered as a sphere of economic activity, which nowadays is characterized by intensive use of intellectual capital as the main economic resource, in the fields of material production as well.
Abstract
The mandate system took shape at an inflexion point in the evolution from an international system based on rule over territories to one based on rule over peoples. Political compromises made ...at the Paris Peace Conference resulted in the creation of a new political agent, the League of Nations Mandate, with no clear sovereign. In seeking to systematize this political outcome, jurists located sovereignty with the victorious Great Powers, the League itself, and with the peoples of the mandate territories. Yet they never achieved a consensus, which created an absence at the centre of the mandate system that politics would have to fill throughout the interwar period.
The research on a creative economy has been gaining momentum globally in the recent years, but the associated concepts such as the cultural economy, the creative class, creative cities and so on, ...have typically been urban or national in orientation. There is evidence showing that many important developments in creative industries take place now in almost all parts of the globe. One of the creative industries which may serve as a vivid example of the complex interplay between the global core and the local periphery is film industry. The paper aims to discuss rise of film production locations and specialised film services in European global semiperipheries. Globalisation of film industry involves the expansion of production away from the established and globally recognised centres, such as Hollywood or Western Europe. While some researchers refer to this development as a ‘runaway production’, this paper examines it through a broader look to core-periphery relations and points out their implications and consequences from the perspective of European countries (with a focus on post-socialist countries of East Central Europe).
In the following paper, I examine the considerable impact of the recent world-economic shift that has determined the circumstances of Hungarian suppliers' value-chain integration. I argue that as a ...result of the specialized positions they occupied in the value-chain after the collapse of the Comecon market, Hungarian enterprises in export-oriented industries faced a dilemma—a trade-off between obtaining the most advanced technologies (and thus access to world-market niches) and retaining ownership in the hands of domestic capital. When company managers opted to protect ownership with the help of the state, they exposed themselves to greater risk of downgrading their position in the value chain. If they managed to get access to advanced technologies (and the requisite funding), they were more likely to lose control over their company's assets, either as a result of a hostile takeover or becoming part of the larger partner's merger-and-acquisition plans. This paper is a discussion of some of the particular characteristics of this dilemma, as well as a comparison with the experience of Hungarian service providers who implemented a different strategy. This paper is also a critical assessment of some of the chief characteristics of the world-economic evolution that has been underway since 2009, such as German automotive value chains' expansion in the CEE region and the growing role of Chinese capital in regional infrastructural projects.
Northern Crossings Edfeldt, Chatarina; Falk, Erik; Hedberg, Andreas ...
Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures,
2022
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
This open access book uses Swedish literature and the Swedish publishing field as recurring examples todescribe and analyse the role of the literary semi-peripheral position in world literature from ...various perspectives and on meso, micro and macro levels, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. This includes the role of translation in the semi-periphery and the conditions under which literature travels to and from that position. The focus is not on Sweden, as such, but rather on the semi-peripheral transitional space as exemplified by the Swedish case. Consisting of three co-written chapters, this study sheds light on what might be called the semi-peripheral condition or the semi-periphery as an area of transition. As part of the Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures series, it makes continuous use of the concepts of 'cosmopolitan' and 'vernacular' – or rather, the processual terms, cosmopolitanization and vernacularization – which provide an overall structure to the analysis of literature and literary phenomena. In this way, the authors show that the semi-periphery is an ideal point of departure to further the understanding of world literature, because it is a place where the cosmopolitan (the literary universal) and the vernacular (the rootedness in a particular culture or place) interact in ways that have not yet been thoroughly explored. The open access edition of this book is available under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.
In recent years there has been a permanent increase in immigration flows to Serbia from various sources. One part stems from massive returns of Serbian citizens from EU in line with the Readmission ...Agreement. On the other side, volume of asylum seekers has been multiplied, although they are in vast majority striving to reach European, i.e. Western countries. Regrettably Serbia has been spotted as a European hotspot when it comes of undocumented migration, including victims of human trafficking, females and minors. Both demographic projections and experience of former socialistic countries indicate that in a long run, i.e. in decades to come, Serbia might face a transition from emigration to immigration, particularly with the accession to EU. Nonetheless, it seems that if this process is to be urged, the phenomenon of immigration should become more visible and contested for in public discourse. Thus general population should have become more sensitized to it. The main argument is that great stocks of immigrants would have been beneficial not only in terms of compensating for long term negative demographic trends in the country, but also for ameliorating of unfavorable economic dependency rates. But for this scenario to come true the main precondition is economic recovery and rise of employment opportunities in particular. Therefore the main idea of this paper is advocating for acceptance and support of immigration as one of the main strategies for social and demographic development, the goal which realization requests not only political will, appropriate institutional apparatus, but also changing attitudes and behavior of local population, their enhanced tolerance and readiness for common everyday living.
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