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This paper explores the regional dimension of plant and firm closure in the United Kingdom using data for the ironfoundry industry over the whole of the postwar period but with particular emphasis on the 1967–1980 period. The impact of ownership on plant closure is stressed, and patterns of ownership change are shown to seriously prejudice the survival of plant in the industry in UK peripheral regions.

This paper, the second of two, is a preliminary attempt to translate a theoretical framework based on the concepts of segmentation and networks of power, as outlined in the first paper, to the establishment level. The data used in the empirical analysis, which are drawn from the West Midlands ironfoundry industry, enable surveyed ironfoundries to be assigned to their appropriate segments. The linkage patterns typical of each of these segments are described and this analysis offers a reinterpretation of previous linkage studies.

This paper explores the changing spatial concentration of the headquarters of large companies in Australia by means of indices extracted from lists of the top one hundred public companies in 1953, 1963, 1973, and 1978. Evidence of variations in company performance between Melbourne and Sydney is presented.

The paper seeks to test the proposition that manufacturers perceive the space within which they operate in behavioural, noneuclidean terms, in terms of ‘hierarchic’ distance, the distance between economic regions within a defined functional hierarchy, rather than in rational, euclidean, cost-distance terms. A hierarchic-distance metric is developed for New Zealand and this is used in an interaction model to predict the pattern of Auckland manufacturers' sales linkages, which are then compared with similar predictions generated from the same interaction model and a linear transportation model employing a cost-distance metric, and the results of all the models are compared with surveyed patterns of sales linkage. The use of the hierarchic metric is found to enhance the explanation of observed patterns of sales linkage, a finding which holds important implications for explanations of the location of economic activity in general.

This paper, the first of two, reinterprets linkage studies as part of a geography of business organisations based on the power relationships between different segments of an industrial economy. Linkage studies are reviewed and found to lack any depth of explanation. An alternative approach based upon a combination of the concepts of segmentation and networks of power is then presented.

The paper demonstrates the problems encountered in the measurement of corporate space preferences which are not present in the residential space preference context—most notably the assignment of people to levels in a decisionmaking hierarchy, and the weighting that is necessary to reflect the contribution that each level makes to any final decision. The greater complexity of the corporate situation highlights the conceptual inadequacy of the principal components technique for the construction of mental maps, with a simple psychological scaling technique appearing to be conceptually more adequate and equally as effective. But, it is the number of items on which data are collected which emerges as the issue of greatest consequence in this type of study, the suggestion having been made that respondents should not be asked to select more than say nine or ten locations from a list of alternatives. The example of a corporate mental map, constructed in the light of the methodological discussion, was shown to have important implications for the spatial learning model proposed by Taylor (1975b), which had been derived from industrial linkage studies. Instead it was suggested that a metric reflecting the organisation of a national space economy into a series of hierarchically arranged and reasonably discrete regional space economies should replace simple euclidean measures of distance (that is, geographic space) within the model.

The product-cycle model is an important explanatory device that has been used extensively in geography. However, it is also a model with significant limiting assumptions that have not been adequately taken into account when it has been used. In this paper the problems and limitations imposed on the model by the assumptions it contains are outlined. Six broad aspects of the model are addressed: the ambiguity of the enterprise context implied in the model; its treatment of the processes of invention and innovation; its simplification of the nature of products; assumptions about scale, labour, and relocation to less developed countries; location-specific advantages; and the relationship of the model to other cycles operating within the business environment. The limitations of the product-cycle model, as it is used in geography, are attributed to the inadequate conceptualisation of the firm, that still persists in the discipline.