Regional assets and network switching: shifting geographies of ownership, control and capital in UK offshore oil

Bridge, Gavin; Dodge, Alexander

doi:10.1093/cjres/rsac016

Regional assets and network switching: shifting geographies of ownership, control and capital in UK offshore oil

Bridge, Gavin; Dodge, Alexander

Authors

Professor Gavin Bridge g.j.bridge@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Alexander Dodge

Abstract

Evolutionary approaches to strategic coupling show how regions harness and match assets, then negotiate their alignment with lead firms. For regions intersected by multiple networks in the same industry, however, the reconfiguration of network-territory relations can have aggregate, co-evolutionary effects that exceed coupling to a single lead firm. In such cases network switching rather than asset matching can be a primary driver of regional transformation, as assets transferred from one lead firm to another become embedded in qualitatively different production networks with contrasting power dynamics and logics of value capture. We analyse transformation in UK offshore oil to reveal three trajectories of change—in ownership, control, and capital—arising from the transfer of regional assets between different categories of lead firm; and identify simultaneous processes of globalisation and localisation in network geographies. We argue that network switching—guided by a heuristic of ‘re-territorialisation’—can complement strategic coupling.

Citation

Bridge, G., & Dodge, A. (2022). Regional assets and network switching: shifting geographies of ownership, control and capital in UK offshore oil. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsac016

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Apr 21, 2022
Online Publication Date	May 15, 2022
Publication Date	2022
Deposit Date	May 26, 2022
Publicly Available Date	May 26, 2022
Journal	Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society
Print ISSN	1752-1378
Electronic ISSN	1752-1386
Publisher	Cambridge Political Economy Society
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsac016

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© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.