The runaway shop (a plant closure to avoid labour problems) has been seen as a feature of industrial change in the USA. Evidence of the runaway shop has also been noted in the UK. This paper analyses two data sets from the UK. The first, drawn from data relating primarily to the early 1980s,...

P<sc>otter</sc> A. and W<sc>atts</sc> H. D. Revisiting Marshall's agglomeration economies: technological relatedness and the evolution of the Sheffield metals cluster, <italic>Regional Studies</italic>. According to Alfred Marshall, firms receive increasing returns from a trinity of agglomeration economies: a local pool of...

An examination of the factors influencing the extent of regional sourcing by multinational manufacturing firms using data collected by interview from 50 foreign- and UK-owned plants in Yorkshire and Humberside. The evidence shows that higher levels of regional sourcing are observed where certain...

The primary objective of this paper is to explore the ways in which the characteristics of owner-managers influence the extent to which their firms are embedded within local clusters of economic activity. Data are drawn from an interview survey of a random sample of small metal-working firms in...

Britain on the Edge of Europe, M. Chisholm, Routledge, London (1995). vx + 182 pp. £12.99 (pbk). ISBN 0 415 11921 9. The Economics of Localized Technological Change and Industrial Dynamics. C. Antonelli, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht (1995). vii + 181 pp. £67.00 (hbk). ISBN 0 7923 2910 4....

This paper draws on evidence from a new survey of large MNE-owned manufacturing plants in Yorkshire and Humberside and questions the expectation that MNE plants will stimulate the local SME sector though local sourcing of material and component inputs. MNE plants in Yorkshire and Humberside...

WATTS H. D. and KIRKHAM J. D. (1999) Plant closures by multi-locational firms: a comparative perspective, Reg. Studies 33, 413-424. Multi-locational firms often close a plant undertaking a particular activity and retain one or more plants undertaking that activity elsewhere within the corporate...

Reviews the concept of a “greenfield site” within human resource management (HRM) and shows that the ways in which distance is conceptualised or measured in describing greenfield sites needs to be made explicit. This is particularly important when comparing different studies and in...