IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/porgrv/v19y2019i2d10.1007_s11115-017-0396-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are they Surgeons? or are they Plumbers? Assessing the Role of Private Sector Consultants in Place Branding and Other Place-Based Economic Development Strategies

Author

Listed:
  • Evan Cleave

    (The University of Western Ontario)

  • Godwin Arku

    (The University of Western Ontario)

  • Merlin Chatwin

    (The University of Western Ontario)

Abstract

This study takes an in-depth look at the roles and utility of consultants in local economic development, focusing on whether there is ultimately a need for this outsourcing of policymaking. Through a series of in-depth interviews with municipal officials and consultants from Ontario, focus is specifically on place branding, a subfield of place-based local economic development. The findings indicate that while the consultants and local officials view themselves as vital in the policy development process, the use of consultants for most communities is actually problematic, as they generally lack the in-depth local knowledge needed for successful place branding.

Suggested Citation

  • Evan Cleave & Godwin Arku & Merlin Chatwin, 2019. "Are they Surgeons? or are they Plumbers? Assessing the Role of Private Sector Consultants in Place Branding and Other Place-Based Economic Development Strategies," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 179-200, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:porgrv:v:19:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s11115-017-0396-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11115-017-0396-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11115-017-0396-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11115-017-0396-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dominic Medway & Gary Warnaby, 2014. "What's in a Name? Place Branding and Toponymic Commodification," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(1), pages 153-167, January.
    2. Andy Pike, 2013. "Economic Geographies of Brands and Branding," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 89(4), pages 317-339, October.
    3. Evan Cleave & Godwin Arku, 2014. "Competitiveness through cooperation: Analysis of spatial patterns and inter-jurisdictional collaboration in the place branding of Ontario communities, Canada," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 29(4-5), pages 541-560, June.
    4. M. Taabazuing & G. Arku & P. Mkandawire, 2015. "Economic development approaches in a changing global economy: what do practitioners think?," Urban Research & Practice, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 145-164, July.
    5. Eugene McCann & Kevin Ward, 2012. "Assembling Urbanism: Following Policies and ‘Studying Through’ the Sites and Situations of Policy Making," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(1), pages 42-51, January.
    6. Andy Pike, 2013. "Economic Geographies of Brands and Branding," Economic Geography, Clark University, vol. 89(4), pages 317-339, October.
    7. Marjana Johansson, 2012. "Place Branding and the Imaginary: The Politics of Re-imagining a Garden City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(16), pages 3611-3626, December.
    8. Godwin Arku, 2015. "Economic development practices of cities in Ontario, Canada," Community Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(5), pages 604-615, December.
    9. Jamie Peck, 2002. "Political Economies of Scale: Fast Policy, Interscalar Relations, and Neoliberal Workfare," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 78(3), pages 331-360, July.
    10. Creplet, F. & Dupouet, O. & Kern, F. & Mehmanpazir, B. & Munier, F., 2001. "Consultants and experts in management consulting firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(9), pages 1517-1535, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Laura Ripoll González & Fred Gale, 2020. "Place Branding as Participatory Governance? An Interdisciplinary Case Study of Tasmania, Australia," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(2), pages 21582440209, May.
    2. Alfried Braumann, 2020. "Amazon’s HQ2 Site Selection Criteria: The New ‘Gold Standard’ in FDI Decision-Making," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 403-417.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ida Andersson & Laura James, 2018. "Altruism or entrepreneurialism? The co-evolution of green place branding and policy tourism in Växjö, Sweden," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(15), pages 3437-3453, November.
    2. Patrizia Casadei & Neil Lee, 2020. "Global cities, creative industries and their representation on social media: A micro-data analysis of Twitter data on the fashion industry," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(6), pages 1195-1220, September.
    3. Di Wu & Neil M. Coe, 2023. "Bottom-up cluster branding through boundary spanners: The case of the Jingdezhen ceramics cluster in China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(14), pages 2874-2900, November.
    4. Xialei Duan & Lawal Mohammed Marafa & Chung-Shing Chan & Han Xu & Lewis T. O. Cheung, 2020. "Measuring the Gaps in the Projected Image and Perceived Image of Rural Tourism Destinations in China’s Yangtze River Delta," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-16, June.
    5. Kleibert, Jana M., 2021. "Geographies of Marketization in Higher Education: Branch Campuses as Territorial and Symbolic Fixes," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 97(4), pages 315-337.
    6. Pradeep K. Chintagunta & Junhong Chu, 2021. "Geography as branding: Descriptive evidence from Taobao," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 53-92, March.
    7. Philip Boland & Stephen McKay, 2021. "Personality association and celebrity museumification of George Best (with nods to John Lennon)," Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 17(4), pages 409-419, December.
    8. Cheng‐Yi Lin, 2021. "State Strategy in the Trans‐Local Branding of a Creative Industry Cluster: A Case Study of the Product Design Industry in Taipei," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 112(3), pages 274-287, July.
    9. Ibert, Oliver & Hess, Martin & Kleibert, Jana & Müller, Felix & Power, Dominic, 2019. "Geographies of dissociation: Value creation, ‘dark’ places, and ‘missing’ links," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 9(1), pages 43-63.
    10. Jane M. Jacobs & Loretta Lees, 2013. "Defensible Space on the Move: Revisiting the Urban Geography of Alice Coleman," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5), pages 1559-1583, September.
    11. Pamela K. Robinson & Linda Hsieh, 2016. "Reshoring: a strategic renewal of luxury clothing supply chains," Operations Management Research, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 89-101, December.
    12. Inès Hassen & Massimo Giovanardi, 2021. "Deflecting national ideologies: Exploring identity management trajectories of medium-sized cities," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(6), pages 1525-1546, September.
    13. Amir Maghssudipour & Annalisa Caloffi & Marco Bellandi & Letizia Donati, 2022. "Language as a regional driver of the trade of place-sensitive products: The case of made-in-Italy goods," Working Papers - Economics wp2022_09.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    14. Flikkema, Meindert & Castaldi, Carolina & de Man, Ard-Pieter & Seip, Marcel, 2019. "Trademarks’ relatedness to product and service innovation: A branding strategy approach," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(6), pages 1340-1353.
    15. Ryan Anders Whitney & David López-García, 2023. "Fast-track institutionalization: The opening of urban planning best practice agencies in Mexico City," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 41(3), pages 600-616, May.
    16. Frédéric CREPLET, 2004. "Les Portails d’entreprise : une réponse aux dimensions de l’entreprise « processeur de connaissances »," Working Papers of BETA 2004-07, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    17. Dario Blanco-Fernandez & Stephan Leitner & Alexandra Rausch, 2022. "Interactions between the individual and the group level in organizations: The case of learning and autonomous group adaptation," Papers 2203.09162, arXiv.org.
    18. Pantic-Dragisic, Svjetlana & Söderlund, Jonas, 2020. "Swift transition and knowledge cycling: Key capabilities for successful technical and engineering consulting?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(1).
    19. Sally Weller, 2017. "Fast Parallels? Contesting Mobile Policy Technologies," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(5), pages 821-837, September.
    20. Lee, Hsing-fen & Miozzo, Marcela & Laredo, Philippe, 2010. "Career patterns and competences of PhDs in science and engineering in the knowledge economy: The case of graduates from a UK research-based university," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(7), pages 869-881, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:porgrv:v:19:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s11115-017-0396-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.