Tom's interests focus upon economic geography and urban-regional development issues in both national and especially international contexts.  His research has especially emphasized the use of Southeast Asia as a regional laboratory.  Long standing interests in transport and accessibility have been extended to include the role of air cargo as a producer service.  In this vein from 2000-2004 , the Geography and Regional Science Program, National Science Foundation supported  a project entitled “Air Cargo Services and Competitive Advantage in Industrializing Economies” which examined the interaction between air cargo carriers, freight forwarders and shippers (largely electronics firms) in producing competitive advantage in the export process of Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore.  Publications from this work have appeared in Economic Geography, Journal of Economic Geography, Papers in Regional Science, Regional Studies and Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie.

He served as a core member of a team effort which involved the encouragement of cooperative and collaborative research on the theme of globalization, e-economy and transport interrelationships between European and North American scientists.  These efforts were generously supported by the National Science Foundation’ s programs in Geography-Regional Science, Western Europe OISE, and Infrastructure Systems Management and Hazard Response.  In addition European Union funding was provided under the project, Sustainable Transport in Europe with Linkages and Liaisons to America (STELLA).  A co-edited book with Cristina Capineri entitled, Globalized Freight Transport: ntermodality, E-Commerce, Logistics and Sustainability was published in 2007 by Edward Elgar.  

In addition, his specific interests are reflected in the interwoven themes of e-commerce, industrialization, technology, global production networks and regional development.  In this vein an initial effort to examine the impact of information technology upon the competitive behavior of firms and the changing nature of production linkages was accomplished through the study of national innovation systems in the internationalization process of the Finnish firm, Nokia, in both its regional and Asian ties.
Related to this is the concern with firms’ adoption of electronic commerce and the impact of this technology.  In 2001, John Wiley International published an edited book on this theme entitled Worlds of Electronic Commerce: Economic, Geographical and Social Dimensions.  The Geography and Regional Science Program, NSF has funded a three year (2005-2008) project with Matthew Zook entitled, Connecting Cyberspace to Place: Understanding the Evolution of Transactions and Value Chains in Electronic Commerce.  The research is emphasizing the forms, processes and geographies of E-commerce across a set of manufacturing firms in the U.S.  More specifically, it will demonstrate how E-commerce contributes to firms’ competitive advantage through the (re)formulation of value chains (comparing physical to virtual) and thereby affects existing geographies of production, distribution and sales.  Of special interest to the project are the spatial manifestations of this reconfiguration and the question of whether value chains and changes in their geographies differ among industries, companies and products.

To complement these previous grants is a new (September 2007) Geography-Regional Science NSF award entitled, Towards a Knowledge Economy: Firm Competitiveness, Institutional Thickness, Localized Learning and Value Added Supply Chain Networks in Penang, Malaysia. The research, which is collaborative with Universiti Sains Malaysia faculty and graduate students, will be carried out in two separate field phases.  The overarching goal of the project is to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which multinational enterprises (MNEs) interact with supplier or sourcing firms and to generalize these behaviors and actions.  The analysis will be carried out, within the context of the learning and innovative process, by examining the supply chain structure and distribution practices of a sample of multi-national enterprises and their supplier firms operating in Penang, Malaysia.  The aim is to detail the nature of the growth of new practices associated with supply value chain development and management and show how this varies among firms in the technology sector.  Among other factors, corporate core values, ownership strategy, technological sophistication, logistical practices, complexity of actor interaction in the value chain, degree of capitalization, product form and life cycle and especially governance structures will be used as influencing variables in assessing the different ways in which firms interact and learning takes place. 

Finally an ongoing project “The Indonesian Rural Non-farm Economy” is being supported by the Committee on Research and Exploration, National Geographic Society.  An initial book entitled The Indonesian Rural Economy: Mobility, Work and Enterprise was published in 2004 jointly by the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies and the University of Washington Press, Seattle.  The project is examining the existing and partial conceptual framework surrounding the rural, non-farm economy in an attempt to point up new ways of understanding its operational and policy potentials.  Especially important in this new framework is the role of the family as an integrated labor unit and its life cycle characteristics.  In addition temporal and spatially disaggregated data and in-depth interviews will be examined to learn the importance and nature of non-farm, non-agricultural employment.  The degree of participation in the non-farm economy by family members and the timing given age and gender characteristics will be sought.  Especially important is the analysis of case studies of entrepreneurship in several provinces.  Barriers and constraints to engagement will be identified for policy purposes. 

Tom served as Director of the Geography and Regional Science Program in the Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Research at the National Science Foundation from 1995 to 1998.  He is editor of Wiley-Blackwell published Growth and Change: A Journal of Urban and Regional Policy,   past Chair of the Asian Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, and an occasional consultant to the ILO, USAID, and the World Bank.  He also is the North American editor for the Ashgate Series in Economic Geography.  In May 2002 the Board of Trustees of the University of Kentucky named him a University Research Professor and in March 2006 he was named a University of Kentucky Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor.  He will take up a post-retirement appointment in July 2008 to work exclusively on research projects and the journal.
*photograph courtesy of Forrest Payne