Rypestøl, J.O., Kyllingstad, N., & Martin, R.

The title of the article is Asset Modification for Firm- and Industry-Restructuring in Times of Economic Crisis.

The article is under consideration for publication in Geoforum. The current status is Major revisions. 

Abstract:

Contributing to the literature on regional industrial restructuring, this article presents novel findings on how firms modify assets for innovation-based restructuring in times of crises. Empirically, the article draws on interviews with 33 firms in the oil and gas (O&G) industry in Southern Norway, which experienced a crisis caused by a massive fall in global oil prices in 2014-2015. We investigate how the crisis affected the asset base of the firms, how they modified their assets for innovation-based restructuring during the crisis, and how and to what extent they drew on system-level assets to overcome the crisis. The central findings are that the firms experienced a substantial asset drain. Asset reuse was the prevailing mode of asset modification in the early phase of the crisis, while firms bridged assets with other firms and organisations to increase innovation activity in the later phase of the crisis. System-level assets were of little relevance, except for the local university. The case illustrates that in times of crises, firms can benefit from an industrial milieu that supports inter-organisational collaboration and from well-aligned firm- and system-level assets.