Going global? Internationalization and diversification in the temporary staffing industry
回顾了生产性服务业扩张策略的现有研究，剖析了临时派遣机构的国际化与多元化战略，指出其不仅影响本行业，还波及制造业和服务业，并探讨了这些战略对劳动力市场和新自由主义化的政治经济影响。
This paper does three things. First it reviews the existing conceptual work on the expansionary strategies of producer services and argues that while illuminating it has paid insufficient attention to the implications of the internationalization&sol;diversification of temporary staffing agencies, the effects of which are not limited to the temporary staffing industry but also bleed into a host of other manufacturing and service industries. Second, and in light of this, it profiles the internationalization and diversification strategies of leading temporary staffing agencies. It argues that while, on the one hand, the temporary staffing industry exhibits the characteristics of a classic producer service sector, on the other hand, its product—<it>labour</it>—distinguishes it in part from the likes of the accounting, advertising, and legal sectors. Its wider political-economic implications, in this case, are the ways in which agency strategies affect labour markets at a range of geographical scales, and how this is best understood. Third, and finally, the paper argues that the growth of the temporary staffing is the result of, and a contributing factor to, the on-going restructuring of national and urban labour markets. In going about their business, temporary staffing agencies contribute, so the paper argues, to the neo-liberalization of national and urban economies, and in doing so create conditions favourable to their continued growth.