Business services and the financing of global production networks: the case of global law firms in Southeast Asia

James R Faulconbridge

Journal of Economic Geography, 2019, vol. 19, issue 4, 897-919

Abstract: Financial and business services (FABSs) as intermediaries play a significant role in global production networks (GPNs). Yet, the mechanisms through which they influence the activities of lead and supplier firms in GPNs have received little in-depth attention. This article addresses the shortcoming and examines how global legal business services configure the financial discipline of transnational corporations (TNCs) in Southeast Asia. It documents the way FABS articulate financial imperatives and encourages the reproduction of ‘global financial architectures’. It also shows, however, that temporal dynamics and spatial specificities in the power relations between FABS and TNCs generate variegated financial configurations. Southeast Asian TNCs adopt and adapt in ways that serve their interests. This implies that the governance effects of FABS have important temporal and spatial contingencies that need to be accounted for in analyses of GPNs.

Keywords: Business services; global production networks; Southeast Asia; law firms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F3 F6 K2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeg/lby066 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jecgeo:v:19:y:2019:i:4:p:897-919.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Geography is currently edited by Jorge De la Roca, Stephen Gibbons, Simona Iammarino, Amanda Ross and James Faulconbridge

More articles in Journal of Economic Geography from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().