This doctoral dissertation award will enable geography graduate student Erik Swyngedouw to conduct field work in the European Economic Community (EEC) in connection with his study of technological change and innovation in the European telecommunications industry. His project will combine analyses of statistical data with interviews with executives of EEC telecommunications firms. The candidate's research will focus especially on the role of the telecommunications industries in "filieres:" flexible territorial production complexes that are created in response to local and regional comparative advantages with respect to the demands of the international economy. Learning how and why multinational firms (particularly telecommunications companies) participate in and shape filieres will enlarge our basic understanding of regional growth and development and the relationships of regional production complexes to international economic structures. The telecommunications industry is a case study that will be used to test the validity of a new theoretical framework which ties interindustry linkages among complementary firms to the regional and global strategies each of the participating firms uses to compete in the international marketplace.
