ABSTRACT
The patterns of business organisation described in this study are historically specific. They represent the most advanced forms of international production arising during the 1970s and early 1980s. Undoubtedly, corporate restructuring will continue, and new processes and structures will emerge. In interpreting these evolving patterns the connection between corporate structure and the organisation of the space economy will have to be drawn more precisely (Wood, 1981). As Dicken and Hewings (1982, pp. 58–9) have noted:
we are only beginning to grope for ways of articulating and understanding how the macro-processes and organisational processes work to produce particular forms of differentiation and integration in the space economy…it is a simple matter to assert that corporate organisation is a key element in an understanding of the way regional economies work: it is another matter to provide the necessary conceptual and empirically testable set of hypotheses and/or models to examine how corporate processes and structures operate to produce particular geographical configurations of activities.
