Temporality of agency in regional development

Summary, in English

The temporality of agency plays a fundamental role in regional development but has received little attention in economic geography and regional studies. This paper zooms in on two aspects of temporality: the temporality of intentions and the temporality of consequences. The former refers to actors’ perception and valuation of opportunities in the near and distant future, whereas the latter refers to the short- and long-term consequences of actions. This paper studies the temporality of agency in the context of regional development. It investigates how short- and long-term intentions motivate different types of agency, how different types of agency affect short- and long-term regional development outcomes and which conditions enable or constrain different types of agency. We illustrate our arguments with an in-depth case study covering the regional development of a labour market in Norway over the last 20 years.

• Author: Markus Grillitsch; Bjørn Asheim; Hjalti Nielsen
• Department/s: Department of Human Geography; CIRCLE
• Publishing year: 2022
• Language: English
• Pages: 107-125
• Publication/Series: European Urban and Regional Studies
• Volume: 29
• Issue: 1
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09697764211028884
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Topic: Human Geography
• Keywords: Agency; economic diversification; innovation policy; innovative entrepreneurship; institutional entrepreneurship; new path development; place-based leadership; regional development; temporality
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 0969-7764