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Global Cities and Business Internationalization: Towards a New Interdisciplinary Research Agenda

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The City in an Era of Cascading Risks

Abstract

As urban centers incorporating worldwide command and coordination functions, global cities act as major hubs contributing to the global economic system. Early research in the late 1990s focused on first class global cities such as London, New York, and Tokyo. This literature was and is still considered as very original, but its geographical coverage remained limited to OECD urban developments. A number of cities in emerging and developing countries have been underestimated or even neglected, even in Africa such as Cairo, Casablanca Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi. Since the turn of the century, research has been completed, notably Bogota, Bombay, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Johannesburg, Jakarta, Manila, Mexico, Santiago and São Paulo. As business internationalization studies have been largely kept out of scant attention in global city research, this chapter aims to present the conceptual debate dealing with global cities mainly from an economic perspective, and to search for linkages with various business internationalization theories. Based on such a cross-combination, the chapter suggests a tentative interdisciplinary approach to study the international business development supportive functions of global cities.

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Benhmade, A., Régnier, P., Spence, M. (2023). Global Cities and Business Internationalization: Towards a New Interdisciplinary Research Agenda. In: Zhang, L., Kanini Wamuchiru, E., Meutchehe Ngomsi, C.A. (eds) The City in an Era of Cascading Risks. City Development: Issues and Best Practices. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2050-1_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2050-1_15

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