Cities in the expansion strategies of transnational corporations
Magdalena Wdowicka
Abstract
The results of a lot of studies conducted in the late 20th and early 21st centuries presented in world literature indicate that globalisation embraces primarily those cities that are chief nodes in the global economic network (cf. Castells 1989, Friedmann 1995, Robertson 1995, Graham, Marvin 2001, Scott 2001, Hall 2005, Sassen 2006, Czerny et al. 2007, Taylor 2010). Cities are places in which large transnational corporations locate their activity, where there is an intensive exchange of information, and where the heaviest global flows are recorded, whether of international investment capital, advanced technologies, or high-quality human capital. This follows, among other things, from the global expansion strategies of the corporations which, in order to boost their competitiveness, seek access to local sources of advanced knowledge, highquality human capital, innovation, and technology. The aim of this paper is to analyse the spatial distribution of activities of the biggest transnational corporations of the world, including geographical flow directions of foreign direct investment and the location of the corporations’ headquarters.
Keywords:
cities, globalization, transnational corporationsReferences
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Magdalena WdowickaStatistics
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