Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

More and more professionals, and other key contributors to transnational capitalism, find themselves working overseas at some point during their careers and this trend seems set to continue. However, while a great deal of research has now been carried out on other kinds of transnationals, especially migrants, we are much less well informed about the key players who contribute towards the working of an ever more globalized economy. In particular, we know little about the reasons why professionals and others embark on overseas employment, how they perceive and deal with their experiences and what consequences prolonged overseas encounters may have both for their individual careers and skill endowments and for their companies and indeed the global economy as a whole. Moreover, the central importance for these professionals of patterns of sociality built around close interpersonal relations and embedded within concrete locations in enabling them to cope with the global workplace and to perform competently for their companies – despite, and indeed because of, their encapsulation within a highly competitive economic system increasingly dispersed over vast distances, dependent upon the space of flows – requires much more investigation. This exploratory study of architects and related professionals, working for large cosmopolitan firms in the building-design industry, tries to make a contribution towards deepening our understanding of these issues.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Beaverstock

J.V.

Smith

R.G.

and Taylor

P.J.

, (1999), ‘The long arm of the law: London's law firms in a globalizing world-economy’, Environment and Planning A, 31 (10): 1857–1876.

Beaverstock

J.V.

Smith

R.G.

and Taylor

P.J.

, (2000), ‘Geographies of globalization: United States law firms in world cities’, Urban Geography, 21 (2): 95–120.

Beck

, (2000), What Is Globalization?, Cambridge: Polity.

Beck

, (2000), The Brave New World of Work, Cambridge, Polity

Beck

and Beck-Gersheim

, (2002), Individualization, London: Sage.

Beck

, (2004), ‘Cosmopolitical realism: on the distinction between cosmopolitanism in philosophy and the social sciences’, Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs, 4 (2): 131–156.

Boden

and Molotch

, (1994), ‘The compulsions of proximity’ in Friedland

and Boden

(eds), Space, Time and Modernity, Berkeley: University of California Press, 257–280.

Bourdieu

, (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Cambridge, Massachussetts: Harvard University Press.

Bourdieu

and Wacquant

L.J.D.

, (1992), An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

10.

Castells

, (1996), The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford: Blackwell.

11.

Doogan

, (2001), ‘Insecurity and long-term employment’, Work, Employment and Society, 15 (3): 419–441.

12.

Eade

(ed.), (1997), Living the Global City: Globalization as a Local Process, Routledge: London.

13.

Featherstone

, (1990), ‘Global culture: an introduction’, in Featherstone

(ed.), Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity, London: Sage, 1–14.

14.

Friedman

, (1986), ‘The world city hypothesis’, Development and Change, 17, 69–83.

15.

Giddens

, (1990), The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity.

16.

Gouldner

A.W.

, (1989), ‘Cosmopolitans and locals: towards an analysis of latent and social roles’, in Steven

(ed.), Classic Readings in Organizational Behaviour, Pacific Grove California: Brooks/Cole Publishers, 400–419.

17.

Hannerz

, (1990), ‘Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture’, in Featherstone

(ed.), Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity, London: Sage, 237–252.

18.

Kennedy

, (2004), ‘Making global society: friendship networks among transnational professionals in the building design industry’, Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs, 4 (2): 2004.

19.

Knox

P.L.

and Taylor

P.J.

, (1995), (eds), World Cities in a World System, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

20.

Martin

H.-P.

and Schumann

, (1997), The Global Trap: Globalization and the Assault on Prosperity and Democracy, London: Zed.

21.

Merton

, (1957), Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, IL, Free Press.

22.

Micklethwaite

and Wooldridge

, (2001), A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization, London: Random House Publishing.

23.

Mitchell

, (1995), ‘Flexible circulation in the Pacific Rim: capitalism in cultural context, Economic Geography, 71 (4): 364–382.

24.

Morgan

, (2001), ‘Transnational communities and business systems’, Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs, 1, 113–130.

25.

Nonini

D.M.

and Ong

, (1997), ‘Chinese transnationalism as an alternative modernity’, in Ong

and Nonini

D.M.

(eds), Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, New York: Routledge, 1–29.

26.

O'Riain

, (2000), ‘Net-working for a living: Irish software developers in the global workplace’, in Burawoy , (eds), Global Ethnography, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 175–202.

27.

Pries

, (2001), New Transnational Social Spaces: International Migration and Transnational Companies in the Early 21^st Century, London: Routledge.

28.

Reich

, (1991), The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for twenty-First Century Capitalism, New York: Simon and Schuster.

29.

Rifkin

, (1996), The End of Work, New York: G.P. Putnam's and Sons.

30.

Robertson

, (1995), ‘Glocalization: time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity’, in Featherstone

Lash

and Robertson

(eds), Global Modernities, London: Sage, 25–44.

31.

Sassen

, (1991), The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

32.

Sassen

, (2000), Cities in a World Economy, Thousand Oaks, California: Pine Forge.

33.

Sassen

, (2002), ‘Introduction: locating cities on global circuits’, in Sassen

(ed.), Global Networks: Linked Cities, New York: Routledge, 1–37.

34.

Sennett

, (1998), The Corrosion of Character: The personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, New York: W.W. Norton and Co.

35.

Sklair

, (2001), The Transnational Capitalist Class, London: Blackwell.

36.

Storper

, (1997), ‘The city: centre of economic reflexivity’, The Service Industries Journal, 17 (1): 1–27.

37.

Taylor

P.J.

, (2004), World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis, London: Routledge.

38.

Urry

, (2003), Global Complexity, Cambridge: Polity Press.

39.

Wittel

, (2000), ‘Towards a network sociality’, Theory, Culture and Society, 18 (6): 51–76.

40.

Zhou

and Tseng

Y.-F.

, (2001), ‘Regrounding the ‘Ungrounded Empires’: localization as the geographical catalyst for transnationalism’, Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs, 1 (2): 131–154.

Joining,Constructing and Benefiting from the Global Workplace: Transnational Professionals in the Building-Design Industry

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References