Geographies of economic governance functions of producer service firms in German global cities

该项目的主要目标是仔细研究德国五个全球城市：法兰克福/墨尔本、杜塞尔多夫、慕尼黑、汉堡和柏林的全球生产性服务公司的经济治理职能的社会空间关系。虽然人们普遍认为，生产性服务公司对全球商品链的治理产生重大影响，从而影响资金、物质和人力资源在这类链内的分配和流动，但从全球城市延伸到生产性服务公司客户经营的其他地点的治理流动空间几乎没有受到关注。由此导致的对生产性服务公司的治理职能如何通过城市间分支在空间上发展和运作缺乏了解，削弱了全球城市论点的说服力，该论点声称这些城市是世界经济的控制中心。在该项目中，采用了混合方法。在第一步中，该项目试图确定131家全球生产性服务公司的影响力“半径”，这些公司在法兰克福/M、杜塞尔多夫、慕尼黑、汉堡和柏林设有373个办事处，调查问卷将分发给德国最大的2500家公司，询问它们与全球生产性服务公司的关系。通过描述性统计分析，展示全球生产性服务业企业的客户结构。其次，将进行面向问题的、半结构化的、面对面的访谈，采访全球生产者服务公司的专业人士和选定客户公司的代表，以了解从德国的全球城市延伸到所有其他地方的经济治理流动空间。该项目的成果将对涉及经济治理的若干文献具有重要意义，并将与有关经济力量、其行为者、组织形式、合法性和地理位置等问题的更广泛辩论有关，这些问题关系到追求可持续的全球经济秩序。

The principal objective of this project is to scrutinize the socio-spatial relations of economic governance functions of global producer service firms in five German global cities: Frankfurt/M, Düsseldorf, Munich, Hamburg, and Berlin. While it is generally accepted that producer service firms exercise a strong impact on the governance of global commodity chains, influencing thereby how financial, material and human resources are allocated and flow within such chains, the spaces of flows of governance that stretch from global cities to other locations where producer service firms’ clients operate, have received little if any attention. The resulting lack of knowledge about how producer service firms’ governance functions develop and function over space through inter-city ramifications undermines the persuasiveness of the global city argument which claims that these cities are control centers of the world economy. In the project, a mixed-method approach is used. In a first step, the project seeks to identify the 'radius' of influence of 131 global producer service firms with 373 offices in Frankfurt/M, Düsseldorf, Munich, Hamburg, and Berlin with the use of a questionnaire that will be distributed to Germany’s 2,500 biggest companies, asking for their relations to global producer service firms. Through descriptive statistical analysis the client structure of the global producer service firms shall be displayed. Secondly, problem-oriented, semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with professionals of the global producer service firms and with representatives of selected client firms will be conducted in order to develop an understanding of the spaces of flows of economic governance that stretch from Germany’s global cities to all sort of other places. The project’s outcomes will be important for several literatures dealing with economic governance, and they will be relevant for wider debates on issues of economic power, its actors, forms of organization, legitimacy and geographies which are at stake in the pursuit of a sustainable global economic order.