- Trial lecture starts at 10.15
- Public defence starts at 12.00
The title of the trial lecture is “Time and scale perspectives in the study of regional development”
Assessment committee:
- Head of committee: Professor Tor Helge Aas
- Professor Markku Sotarauta, Tampere University Finland
- Associate Professor Nora Geirsdotter Bækkelund, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences
Supervisors in the doctoral work:
- Professor Jan Ole Rypestøl, UiA
Summary of thesis
Green regional industrial restructuring places new demands on how regional economies organise, learn, and adapt in response to grand societal challenges. Green restructuring unfolds both as reorientations within established industries and as the emergence of new activities, which together require clearer accounts of the conditions that make change feasible, the pace at which it can proceed, and the directions in which it is likely to move. The regional innovation system (RIS) approach underscores the importance of regional contexts in shaping how knowledge and innovation are developed and used, and thus how industrial restructuring is enabled or constrained. Within evolutionary economic geography (EEG), RIS is an established framework for analysing why innovation and industrial change unfold unevenly across different regional contexts. Nevertheless, important research gaps remain. The extant literature often underspecifies which assets matter and at what scales; it tends to present assets mainly as enablers without considering how they may also operate as barriers; and it provides limited guidance on how culture shapes green restructuring. A refined RIS approach is therefore needed to show how assets constitute conditions for action, and how actors – through different forms of agency – modify assets within and beyond the region.
This thesis addresses these research gaps and introduces novel research aimed at illuminating the processes of green regional industrial restructuring. Consequently, the overall aim of the thesis is to examine how the RIS approach can be refined to better explain how regional asset bases and different forms of agency condition green industrial restructuring.
The thesis contributes to the extant literature by clarifying how regional asset bases, together with access to extra-regional assets, set conditions for actions in green industrial restructuring. It indicates that assets and asset constellations can function both as enablers and as barriers to green restructuring. Culture is brought into this perspective through cultural (mis)alignment, highlighting how cultural modification processes can influence the feasibility, pace, and direction of change.
The thesis further contributes to our understanding of agency by outlining how firm- and system-level actors shape green restructuring across the phases of green regional industrial path development. It points to configurations in which system-level agency develops alongside firm initiatives, as well as to cases in which existing system-level arrangements persist while firms seek change. The thesis also introduces coalition agency as coordinated actions around shared objectives with complementary motivations, suggesting that such arrangements can be particularly relevant at critical junctures and may take different forms across contrasting RIS types.
The thesis’s research design is inspired by critical realism, and the empirical evidence draws on a rich set of triangulations. The empirical cases are from several regional innovation systems in Norway and one in Sweden.
This thesis comprises four articles and this kappa (synthesis). The four articles are separate contributions, either published in peer-reviewed journals or currently under review. They examine processes of green regional industrial restructuring, with a focus on the role of assets and agency in such processes. The purpose of the kappa is to present the overall theoretical and analytical framework, along with the methodological foundation that informs the thesis. Furthermore, the kappa presents the overall findings, answers the thesis’s research questions, and draws conclusions.
What to do as an online audience member
The disputation is open to the public. To follow the trial lecture and the public defence online, register on Zoom.
We ask online audience members to join no earlier than 10 minutes in advance. After these times, you can leave and rejoin the meeting at any time.
Opponent ex auditorio:
Deadline for the public to pose questions is during the break between the two opponents. Questions ex auditorio can be submitted to disputation chair.
Questions?
- gunvor.guttormsen@uia.no
- Phone
- +47 38 14 16 48