Ryser Laura, Markey Sean, Halseth Greg
University of Northern British Columbia, Canada.
Simon Fraser University, Canada.
Local Econ. 2020 Dec;35(8):831-851. doi: 10.1177/0269094221993439. Epub 2021 Feb 16.
The growth of mobile workforces to support diversified resource extraction activities, compared to historically single-industry towns, represents a key change in rural and remote resource landscapes that has accelerated since the 1980s. Mobile workforces can present many opportunities to rural communities and economies. However, the capacity, viability and competitiveness of rural-based businesses to engage in supply chains serving mobile labour may be undermined by limited attention to how businesses manoeuvre downturns while maintaining a level of readiness to recover and scale-up in order to meet emerging mobile workforce needs. Drawing upon interviews with businesses in Fort St. John, British Columbia, Canada, our research uses the concept of resiliency to examine challenges and strategies associated with business capacity and agility to scale-up and scale-down in response to changing economic conditions associated with large-scale mobile workforces and related economic sectors. Our findings suggest that the capacity to scale-up and scale-down is shaped by capital, human resource and infrastructure strategies, inventory management and contract management strategies. Industry and state policies may also play a role supporting the conditions that will improve the agility, capacity and readiness of businesses operating in volatile resource-based economies.
与历史上的单一产业城镇相比，为支持多样化资源开采活动而出现的流动劳动力的增长，代表了自20世纪80年代以来加速的农村和偏远地区资源格局的关键变化。流动劳动力可以为农村社区和经济带来许多机遇。然而，农村企业参与服务流动劳动力的供应链的能力、生存能力和竞争力，可能会因对企业如何应对经济衰退关注有限而受到削弱，同时企业要保持一定的复苏和扩大规模的准备状态，以便满足新兴的流动劳动力需求。通过对加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省圣约翰堡的企业进行访谈，我们的研究运用复原力的概念，来审视与企业能力以及根据与大规模流动劳动力和相关经济部门相关的不断变化的经济状况进行扩大和缩小规模的灵活性相关的挑战和战略。我们的研究结果表明，扩大和缩小规模的能力受到资本、人力资源和基础设施战略、库存管理和合同管理战略的影响。行业和国家政策也可能在支持改善在动荡的资源型经济中运营的企业的灵活性、能力和准备状态的条件方面发挥作用。
