ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the critical link between localities/regions and the global economy through examining key economic actors – business firms and their transnational production networks. It focuses on two key issues that speak well to the interface between economic geography and International business studies: the geographical nature of International business and the theorization of spatiality in International business studies. The first issue is fairly obvious in a global economy characterized by densely interconnected networks of firms and economies operating at different geographical scales. Second, geography matters to International business in diverse ways beyond simply discrete locations as cost variables measured by their distance-decay effects. A relational perspective on spatiality in International business conceives location as only one dimension of the different spatial configurations of cross-border activities. The chapter aims to construct a relational perspective on transnational activities by global firms.
