Purpose: The study was designed to investigate the bidirectional causation between the real estate market characteristics (residential property prices/rents (including PTR), office rents) and the rise of coworking spaces (CSs) in the peripheral areas of Germany.Design/methodology/approach: Based on the desk research, the authors constructed their own database of 1,201 CSs. The authors gathered data on the residential and office prices and rents on a district level. To identify real market differences between districts with and without CSs, the authors applied thet-test for independent samples.Findings: The second-highest number of CSs were found to operate in the office market peripheries. This phenomenon should be explained by a search for lower office rents, which CSs seek. Most CSs in the peripheral areas of Germany were only recently established in tourist-oriented regions in the south and north of Germany. In this paper, the authors confirmed that the strength of peripheral CSs lies in the hybridity of their operations: for the majority of CSs, running a CS is a non-core business. The authors argue that the role of CSs is rather limited in attracting real estate investors and boosting the real estate market in the peripheral areas of Germany.Practical implications: The research shows that peripheral locations are attracting CSs to significant extent. The study shows that CSs can be part of corporate real estate or workplace strategies. As the majority of peripheral CSs are located in tourism areas, the subletting of vacant spaces could be a lucrative business model for hotels, particularly in the times of pandemics. Therefore, further research should focus on the role of tourist areas in the implementation of CSs model.Originality/value: The focus of this study (CSs in peripheral areas) is original. Additionally, applying the real estate perspective to study the location of CSs is novel as well.

The rapid growth of Central European economies has been related to inward FDI, so these countries are often regarded as dependent market economies. What is interesting in this context is the international expansion of some domestic-owned manufacturing companies from Central Europe. Looking through the lens of global production networks (GPN) and evolutionary resilience perspectives, the paper aims to identify paths and mechanisms of development of new multinational companies, namely Polish automotive firms expanding from around 2010 onwards in the global markets through acquisitions and greenfield investments in Western Europe, North America, and Asia. The authors ponder on the underlying motives and barriers of this process, the capabilities, and features of Polish-owned companies. In order to do it, both qualitative (13 interviews with representatives of new multinationals and the other stakeholders preceded by content analysis of various documents, including company annual reports in particular) and quantitative (analysis of international trade, revenues, employment, locational data) insights are used for the period covering the time span between 1999 and 2020. As the result, the international expansion of domestic-owned firms is interpreted as a specific critical conjuncture of three mechanisms: (1) development of Central-Eastern European economies since the end of communism, (2) the evolution of the Western European core, and (3) the trajectory of individual Polish firms. We argue development trajectories of the firms going global cannot be understood without taking into account the dynamic interdependence between firm-specific capabilities (including the position within GPNs) and the changing characteristics of the countries (e.g., evolving regional assets).

Conceptualizations of path creation proposed in recent years neglect the role of time and temporal mechanisms. This paper argues that a more comprehensive understanding of inter-path relations that incorporates both agency and relationships among temporal sequences can be achieved using the concept of critical conjuncture, which is overlooked in the contemporary path-creation literature. This paper draws on a case study of the industrial region of Upper Silesia, Poland, where a new regional trajectory is emerging as the result of the unpredicted critical conjuncture of the endogenously driven path of the information technology services sector and the exogenous foreign direct investment-based path of the automotive industry.

By combining the two emerging discourses on regional development platforms and field configuration, the study develops a novel perspective on regional transformation. This will be achieved through tracing self-reinforcing or counterbalancing events of a regional initiative and contextualising them within the trajectory of the Podkarpackie region in Southeast Poland, which intends to convert from a low-cost workbench towards an innovative centre. The results show that the regional policy in Podkarpackie underwent a transformation from a conventional cluster initiative towards smart specialisation and is now moving to something that might be referred to as ‘(smart) diversification’ in the future.

The location patterns of new working spaces and the factors driving their emergence have been widely studied in Europe. However, research has mainly focused on specific countries and very local areas. We widen this perspective to a regional one and conduct a cross‐country study of the location patterns and determinants of today's main new working spaces, specifically coworking spaces that facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing. Coworking spaces are traditionally associated in the literature with vibrant urban places, but they are also found in non‐metropolitan regions. Drawing on a unique data set of coworking space locations in four large European countries (Spain, France, Germany and Poland), we test how demographic, economic, structural, technological and accessibility‐related determinants affect the location of these spaces. We then investigate whether the identified determinants vary between metropolitan and non‐metropolitan and between countries, controlling for spatial effects.

This article introduces the main themes of the special issue on the role of business service foreign investment in Central and Eastern Europe and its propensity to upgrade regions and localities. The debate is firmly set in the context of an increasing emphasis on the knowledge economy. We point to conceptual and data problems which make it difficult to accurately gauge quantitative and qualitative trends. A connection is made between the drivers of offshoring and the potential benefits for localities. The importance of linking research findings to policy issues is underlined.