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Financialization takes off at Boeing

C. M. Muellerleile, Christopher Muellerleile Orcid Logo

Journal of Economic Geography, Volume: 9, Issue: 5, Pages: 663 - 677

Swansea University Author: Christopher Muellerleile Orcid Logo

DOI (Published version): 10.1093/jeg/lbp025

Abstract

This article examines the 2001 dislocation of the headquarters of the iconic US aerospace company, Boeing, out of the Puget Sound region of the State of Washington, its ancestral manufacturing base. It argues the rationale for the exit was the desire on the part of Boeing's increasingly finance...

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Published in: Journal of Economic Geography
Published: 2009
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa26495
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Abstract: This article examines the 2001 dislocation of the headquarters of the iconic US aerospace company, Boeing, out of the Puget Sound region of the State of Washington, its ancestral manufacturing base. It argues the rationale for the exit was the desire on the part of Boeing's increasingly finance-focused executives to detach and disembed the ‘brains’ of the company from the product-focused, engineering-based corporate culture embedded in Puget Sound. The article attempts to ground the logic of financialization by examining how it emerged at, and was shaped by one particular company. I employ economic geographers’ conceptions of place-based corporate culture, and societal, territorial and network embeddedness (Hess, 2004, Progress in Human Geography, 28: 165–186) to explain how financialization and corporate dislocation can enable each other. The article also briefly discusses Boeing's eventual decision to re-embed its headquarters in downtown Chicago, Illinois.
Item Description: This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Economic Geography following peer review. The version of record is available online at: http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/content/9/5/663
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Issue: 5
Start Page: 663
End Page: 677