Introduction

The scope of industrial geography has changed greatly over the present century. The early emphasis on the location of manufacturing industry and on commodity flows has been enlarged, in the post-war period, in response to a number of wider social and economic changes. These include the growing importance of service industries, the growth of multinational and multiplant enterprises, increased direct government involvement in national economies, and the pervasive influence of the global economy on economic change at all scales. In Chapter 1 Bill Lever examines the major theoretical developments underlying modern industrial geography by considering, in turn, neoclassical models, behavioural theories of industrial decision-making, and the more recent structural approach. Attention is also given to methodological questions related to data availability. A discussion of the early theoretical work on industrial location and subsequent extensions of the basic models is followed by a detailed assessment of the interrelationships between, and relative importance of, the different cost factors underlying plant location. Recent geographical interest in the spatial variation of profits is also considered. Over the last two decades, however, the idealised assumptions of neoclassical theory have been superseded by the study of entrepreneurial behaviour. This trend may be explained partly by the declining importance of traditional cost factors for larger enterprises and, particularly in the United Kingdom, the increasing distortion of free-market forces by government policy. Firms operate within an environment of risk and uncertainty, and it is suggested that the notion of corporate behaviour as an adaptive response to different environments can be employed to explain both the growth of larger firms and the continued survival of the small-scale sector. For geographers the spatial expression of entrepreneurial decisions remains a focal concern and within this framework the question of the appropriate scale of investigation is of fundamental importance. The difficulty of inferring the organisational behaviour of companies from aggregate-level data is partly overcome by the use of establishment-based data sets and ‘components of change’ analyses which seek to relate employment change to the type and location of establishment. Study of ownership characteristics (e.g. whether locally owned or foreign controlled) can also provide further understanding of regional industrial structure, while studies of individual firms or of cohort groups offer valuable insight into entrepreneurial decisions. In contrast to the ‘geography of enterprise’ perspective underlying behavioural theories the more recent structuralist approach emphasises the links between enterprises and the wider society in which decisions are the outcome of conflict between different power groups (e.g. capital and labour). In essence the structuralist approach does not employ abstract models of the firm, recognises spatial change as a product of non-spatial (structural) forces in the macro-economy, and focuses on particular product markets to explain the behaviour of different types of company. Application of this perspective is illustrated by considering the locational consequences of three types of production reorganisation (intensification, investment and technical change, and rationalisation). Particular attention is given to economic structures within

local labour markets dominated by a single industrial employer. It is concluded that while the three major paradigms do represent a chronological development in industrial geography they are not mutually exclusive and elements of each can be usefully employed in the basic task of understanding the location and activity of industry.