News from the Music Industry

Increasingly the world is becoming globalised and the riots at Seattle, Stockholm and Genoa provide some evidence of the power and control of Multinational or Transnational Companies (MNCs/TNCs) and the subsequent backlash against this. The forces that have led to the growth of MNCs/TNCs are manifold but would include the reduction in trade barriers, the development of the global triad trading block system (South East Asia and China, Europe, and North America), the liberalisation and deregulation of markets, the move towards world-wide privatisation, strategic decisions by organisations that wish to dominate world markets as their domestic market growth rates have slowed down, and the increased competition some organisations are finding in their domestic markets. All these factors together have seen the growth almost year-on-year of foreign direct investment (FDI), as organisations seek to take advantage of market and cost saving opportunities both within Europe and in the UK in particular.

Whilst a growing number of econometric and survey-based studies have been published that focus on the key influences which determine inbound FDI at the national level, relatively few studies exist into the forces which affect the distribution of FDI between UK regions. The aim of this paper is to rectify this omission by seeking to identify and analyse a set of factors that influence the attraction of inbound FDI to UK regions.

LOCATIONAL CHOICE OF FDI BY TNCs

Theoretical work by Stopford and Strange (1991) and Dunning (1993) suggests that four main factors determine the national and regional location of FDI by transnational corporations (TNCs). These are: (physical, labour or technological); the search for markets (following customers, suppliers or competitors abroad, seeking increased familiarity with the local business environment or reducing their costs of supplying a foreign market); the search for efficiency (exploiting different factor endowments, cultures, institutional arrangements, economic systems and policies and market structures); and finally the search for strategic assets (enabling them to sustain and advance their international competitive advantages). In addition, national and regional resource endowments; market access and potential; favourable competitive positions; strong consumer demand; and favourable government policies can all help in attracting FDI to specific national and regional locations.